“There,” he said, confidently. The General Cromwell, Janice’s old command, and unless he’d misread her completely, her current command ship. There was no way to confirm it, short of hacking into the communications network between the enemy ships, but he was sure that he was right. It wasn’t even something Colin would have thought of. He’d always stolen his command ships from the Empire. “Helm, set course for that ship.”
He’d cloaked the Random Numbers as soon as it had left the gravity shadow and circled around to lurk in hiding and it was unlikely in the extreme that they had been detected, although the haze of sensor distortion caused by so many detonating warheads and dying ships was proving a problem for the cloaking device. He’d sneaked up on superdreadnaught before, back while he’d been hiding out along the Rim, but now it was serious. It wasn’t a game anymore.
“Course set,” the helmsman said. “It’s been a pleasure, sir.”
Cordova nodded and settled back into his command chair. “Engage.”
“Those ships aren’t going to be a threat to us,” Daria snapped. Joshua was proving something of a disappointment to her. The arrival of ships from the first-rank worlds changed nothing. They had no superdreadnaughts, no fighters and the largest ship they had was a battleship. They weren’t going to be able to stop her from regaining her throne. She’d come too far and burned too many bridges to turn away now. “Hold your ground and they’ll break over us.”
“They have enough missile launchers to complete our destruction,” Joshua countered, angrily. Daria spotted the blonde girl behind him and knew, with a certainty that transcended rational thought, that it was her who’d tried to talk Joshua out of continuing the engagement. She wouldn’t survive once Daria had returned to her throne. She would make a pile of her enemies skulls and use them for unsightly purposes. “We’re trapped, Your Majesty. We cannot even break off from the engagement. The most we can do is destroy Earth and that would result in our destruction.”
“I will not surrender,” Daria snapped. “This is still hope…”
“Incoming,” the tactical officer screamed. Daria spun around to stare at the tactical display. The hazy icon of a cloaked ship was closing in on the General Cromwell. “They’re going to ram us!”
“Engage it,” Daria snapped. “Take it out!”
“It’s too late,” the tactical officer said. “It’s too close…”
The Random Numbers rammed the General Cromwell amidships. At such speeds, the mass of a light cruiser could be deadly, but Cordova had added a final bitter jest. Having decided to commit suicide and take Daria with him, he had loaded as much antimatter as he could beg, borrow or steal from the Jupiter Shipyards, choosing to ignore the risks of storing it on a starship. Even if Daria did manage to destroy them before they could ram, the explosion would still be lethal to her ship, but as it was it didn’t matter. The resulting explosion blotted both ships out of existence.
“Holy shit,” someone breathed.
Colin couldn’t disagree. The final moments of the Random Numbers had only been seen by a drone, launched by the first-rank starships, but the antimatter blast had been seen everywhere. It was going to cause problems on Earth, he realised, grimly. So much radiation and other effects would harm the entire planet. The Empire’s ban on antimatter outside certain highly secure research labs hadn’t been purely to deprive everyone of a useful, if desperate, weapon.
And the fighting seemed to have paused.
“Raise the enemy flagship,” he ordered, tiredly. After that, he suspected that whoever was in command would be feeling reasonable. The blast would have blown our sensors and fucked up tactical systems all over their remaining fleet. They might have killed the starfighter carrier — Colin hadn’t allowed himself any time to grieve for David Houston and the remains of his crew — but their position was hopeless. They had to know it. “Tell them… that we will accept their surrender.”
Joshua’s face was expressionless as the signal came in. The General Monck hadn’t been badly touched by the antimatter blast, but dozens of other ships had been crippled. The communications network was completely off-line, along with dozens of other vital systems… and they couldn’t be re-established in time.
“Sir?” Penny asked, grimly. Daria’s death in that terrifying moment when matter met antimatter and complete annihilation resulted had left Joshua in undisputed command of the fleet. It had become a poisoned chalice. “Sir, what do we do?”
Joshua pulled himself to his feet. “Anne, signal the fleet,” he ordered, in a tone that could not be challenged or disputed. “Inform them that I am ordering a full and unconditional surrender. They are to accept that and obey all orders from the victors.” He smiled bleakly, as if there was no humour left in his soul. “I dare say that they will treat us under the Moscow Accords if we surrender promptly.”
He looked over at Anne. “Until the Marines arrive, you will command the fleet,” he added. His face twisted for a long moment, as if he wanted to say something profound, but no longer cared. Penny realised, with a chill, just what he had in mind. The crews might be treated under the Accords, but Joshua himself couldn’t be. He’d betrayed the Provisional Government. As the senior survivor, he would be the scapegoat for Daria’s crimes. “It was a honour to serve with you all again.”
Joshua left the bridge, not looking back.
A few minutes later, they heard the single shot.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Two months had passed since the Second Battle of Earth.
Colin watched from the balcony as Parliament was called to order, the first real Parliament representing the entire Empire. It had taken nearly a month to get ships out to Cottbus in the wake of Admiral Wilhelm’s defeat and Joshua’s suicide, but when they arrived they’d been relieved and surprised to discover that the sector was under control and Admiral Garland had occupied most of the planets. The remaining three sectors had lost their warlords in the Battle of Earth, along with their sector fleets, and offered little resistance when the Empire reclaimed them. Like Cottbus, they’d been military dictatorships, governed by men who’d seen a chance for real power at last and taken it. Some warlords still existed out along the Rim, but with all of the Empire’s superdreadnaughts accounted for, they would eventually either come in from the cold or devolve into pirate groups. They wouldn’t remain a threat for long.
He smiled as René Goscinny, newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister of the Empire, stood up and started a long speech. The Empire was changing every day. Now that the Thousand Families had been effectively destroyed, either by Daria or by being removed to a colony world where they could live for the remainder of their lives in peace, economic life in the Empire was changing rapidly. Kathy had told him that the first-rank worlds would have an advantage, now that the monopolies and proscribed technology had been rescinded, in research and development, although some of the new combines would start catching up quickly. It was a Darwinian struggle, the survival of the fittest, but one that would end up serving the Empire well. The first-rank status, conferred upon almost all worlds, would lead to some unrest, but eventually it would all settle down. He smiled again, watching Marius Roodt, the President of the Chamber, and Blondel Dupre, Prime Minister, bring Parliament to order. They might be contentious at times, but after Daria’s desperate attempt to seize the power for herself — again — they had learned a few lessons. The new Empire would be very different to the old. It was almost a shame that he wouldn’t be there to see it.