She paused. “I wouldn’t want to recommend that we do anything hasty,” she added. “I want to gather as much intelligence as possible before making any moves, which will allow us to target them more effectively. I find it hard to believe that they won’t have arsenal ships, for example, or even modified gunboats and destroyers. The concepts were introduced over a year ago and there was nothing wrong with the sensor data the Empire collected. Hell, they hit us with arsenal ships at Morrison.”
The memory of the damaged and trapped Havoc, exposed to merciless fire, rose unbidden in her mind and she shivered. She had wondered, deep inside, if she had lost her nerve then, after she’d been defeated and taken prisoner. If it hadn’t been for a honest Imperial Navy Admiral, a concept that still surprised her, she would have been handed over to the SDs… and whatever was left of her after their interrogation would have been shot for mutiny. She still had nightmares about being a helpless prisoner…
“I see,” Goscinny said. If he followed her thoughts, he showed no sign of it. “And would you support military action if I recommended it?”
Katy smiled. Colin had instituted one major change for the mission; she, not Goscinny, was the final arbiter of military action. If she believed that the mission was impossible, or if circumstances changed radically, she had the authority to refuse to take her ships into harm’s way, although if Admiral Wilhelm did intend to start something, there would be no way that she could avoid engagement. She’d probably be second-guessed by everyone, after the fact, but it would be a worthwhile price to pay for keeping her ships and crews safe. Her only worry was that she might use it as an excuse to remain out of the firing line.
“It depends on what we find,” she said. “Now, I have a question for you. Why exactly aren’t we going straight to Cottbus, bashing down the door and demanding answers about the destruction of our ships?”
Goscinny considered, stroking his chin absently. “Because we don’t know exactly what is going on out there,” he said, finally. “We don’t know just what he’s doing…”
“Bullshit,” Katy said. “We know that he created a deliberate ambush and blew eight of our ships away, without provocation of any kind. The shooting, Mr Ambassador, has already started.”
“True enough,” Goscinny said, dispassionately. Katy, who couldn’t have taken the deaths of any of her crewmen so lightly, scowled at him. “The problem is rather more complex. The Empire is in a very delicate state. If we push too hard against Cottbus, we might discover that various other worlds will take it as a sign that we intend to be worse than the Empire and rebel, against us, the rebels. In fact…”
He spoke for nearly twenty minutes, leaving Katy feeling more confused than ever. “Are you telling me,” she said, finally, “that we don’t dare go after him because the rest of the Empire might rebel?”
“A crude, but accurate summation,” Goscinny said. “Cottbus’s declaration of independence puts us in a worrying legal position. If we move too quickly, we may find that we have only forced others…”
“They fired on us,” Katy snapped. “We need to demand answers.”
“And we will,” Goscinny said. “I intend to push that forward as hard as possible. If Cottbus truly wishes to be regarded as an independent state, as they claim to do, they have committed an act of war and there will be retribution. If they still want to be part of the Empire, then they have to play the game by our rules, including acceptance of Parliament as the supreme authority within the Empire.”
He shrugged. “The official position of Parliament is that the Empire is the supreme authority over humanity and that Cottbus, as a human-settled sector, is under its control,” he concluded. “Unofficially, I have powers to negotiate a degree of autonomy for Cottbus, if there are satisfactory answers to our questions and even grant amnesty to any ex-Imperials living there. Does that answer your question?”
“Partly,” Katy said. “It leads, however, to another point. Why did they destroy the cruisers?”
Goscinny blinked. “Their official explanation…”
“Is obvious tripe,” Katy said, not without a certain degree of relish. “Do you have a background in space warfare?” Goscinny shook his head. “Take it from me, then. They could not have engaged the cruisers successfully without luring them into a gravity shadow — which they did, apart from one which remained outside the gravity shadow and escaped when the shooting started. Why do that and risk provoking our wrath? Why even open fire when it was almost certain that one of the ships would escape anyway?”
“I don’t know,” Goscinny said. His voice was suspiciously even. “Why do you think they launched such an attack?”
Katy smiled. “The cruisers saw something they weren’t meant to see,” she said. “They saw something that Admiral Wilhelm, or whoever is really in charge in that sector, didn’t want us to see. They saw something so important that Admiral Wilhelm risked starting a second round of civil war by destroying our ships, just to prevent the word from getting out. The only question is what did the ships see?”
“Good point,” Goscinny said, finally. “Have you informed Colin?”
“Yes,” Katy said. She’d done more than that. She’d studied and analysed the records from the surviving cruiser carefully, looking for anything that was out of the ordinary. The only detail she had seen that was odd was that Admiral Wilhelm’s force looked to be in remarkably good shape for a sector fleet that hadn’t seen real combat for centuries. The Morrison Sector Fleet had degraded so much, according to Joshua, that it wouldn’t have been able to put up a real resistance before he arrived.
She smiled again as she stood up. “He told us to be careful.”
The hatch opened, allowing her to step back out into the starship’s corridors. Impulsively, she touched one of the bulkheads with her bare hands, feeling the thrumming power beating through the hull as the power plants came up to full readiness, charging the flicker drive for the flight to the first waypoint. The ship had only been commissioned for two months and it still had the indefinably new smell, but the two thousand crewers were pushing it away as they worked to get their ship ready for deployment.
She walked down the corridors, nodding absently to crewmen who saluted her as she passed, pausing long enough to check some of their work before moving onwards. The Captain would normally handle the inspection tour, although Katy intended to accompany him from time to time, and she had to be careful not to stand on his feet. The Imperial Navy had had plenty of Admirals who had made Captains passengers on their own ships, but the Shadow Fleet had tried to avoid it. It didn’t make for potential future flag officers.
The secure compartment had a pair of armed Marines in light body armour standing outside, their faces hidden behind blank masks that would provide protection against almost all handheld weapons available to the crew. The Imperial Navy had rarely permitted its crews to carry and handle weapons, but the Shadow Fleet had taken a different view and the new Imperial Navy had copied that particular example. Katy wasn’t sure she liked the concept, although she had to admit that it was slightly hypocritical, but it was generally a welcome change.
“You may enter,” one of the Marines said, after checking her ID implants. If they hadn’t confirmed her identity, they would have stunned her first and worried about asking questions later. Every superdreadnaught had a secure compartment, accessible only by a select group of people, and they tended to hold important and classified items, although she’d heard of a Captain who used his to store his collection of wine bottles. “Please remember to follow standard…”