“Bastards,” Colin said, shortly. “I thought the Beyond didn’t give a damn where you came from, only who you were.”
Daria shrugged. “They tend to make an exception for aristocrats,” she said. “But she definitely isn’t a spy.”
Colin tended to agree. Anderson had kept a close eye on Hannelore ever since she joined the rebellion, but even the professional paranoid had had to admit that Hannelore seemed loyal to her new cause. Besides, like Colin himself, she had ample reason to be dissatisfied with her position in the Empire. She could never have risen higher, no matter how well she did.
“I’m a mutineer,” Colin pointed out. “Cordova is a deserter. Hester is a rebel. How many half-reformed pirates do we have under our banner?”
“People are stupid,” Daria said, dryly. “You should know that by now.”
She shook her head. “I also had to speak to a couple of officers who were eagerly looking forward to looting, raping and burning their way across the Empire. We’re going to have trouble with them. I can tell.”
Colin nodded. The Empire had sowed hatred wherever it went, even on otherwise harmless and unimportant worlds. In the wake of the rebel conquests, administrators and other imperial personnel had found themselves under attack from their former subordinates and brutally slaughtered. Colin had found himself forced to offer safe havens to the officials, knowing that a bloody slaughter would only harden hearts on the other side. No one would surrender if they thought they were merely going to be killed anyway.
There were plenty of administrators — Admiral Percival, for one — Colin would happily kill himself. He had no problems understanding why the locals would want to slaughter every official they could catch. But it created a political nightmare for the Popular Front.
And it would get worse if his subordinates started committing atrocities in his name.
“Keep a sharp eye on them,” he said, finally. “And if they do start committing atrocities, we’ll have to deal with them.”
He gritted his teeth at the thought. People were rarely logical. If they saw their fellows punished, it was quite likely that they wouldn’t see the justice in it. If the atrocity didn’t look like an atrocity, or if they believed the victims deserved what they got, they would start wondering about Colin. And then he might face a mutiny of his own.
“By now, Public Information will probably have told everyone that we’ve scorched the entire sector,” Daria pointed out. “Do you think it will matter?”
She had a point, Colin knew. The Empire’s propaganda machine was the only part of the bureaucracy to be genuinely efficient. By now, he suspected, the Empire’s counter-narrative would already be on its way back out towards Camelot and Jackson’s Folly. He wondered, absently, just what angle they would take. Would Colin be branded a pirate, a mutineer or someone who had merely been misled? Or would they simply claim that the Shadow Fleet had been captured and its former crewmen executed by rebels? They wouldn’t want to suggest that a mutiny could be successful.
Colin rather doubted they would succeed. He’d been a naval officer long enough to know that there were plenty of ways to exchange information without Imperial Intelligence getting wind of it, even if it was just whispered conversations in the washrooms or beside one of the heavy drive units. Word of the mutinies would have spread through the entire navy by now, suggesting to capable and ambitious crewmen that they might want to try their luck. Even a failed mutiny would tie up the Empire’s resources for quite some time…
… And if they put more Blackshirts on the starships, mutiny was almost guaranteed.
It galled him to be thinking like a calculating bastard, rather than a naval officer. The thought of having crews tormented by drug-addled imbeciles should have been horrific. Instead, he almost welcomed the thought. More mutinies would help the cause immeasurably. But each of them would be triggered by human suffering.
Daria reached over and touched his arm. “Colin?”
Colin started. “Yes?”
“You zoned out for a moment,” Daria said. She looked concerned, surprisingly so. “Are you all right?”
“I think so,” Colin said, ruefully. Showing weakness was a deadly mistake in the Beyond — and in the navy. “I was just wondering about the cost.”
Daria snorted. “Are you having doubts?”
She pushed on before he could answer. “Before we liberated these sectors,” she said, “the population lived in a nightmare. None of them dared breath easily. The knock on the door could come at any time, whereupon they could be dragged out of their homes, beaten halfway to death and then taken to penal camps. Their children could be taken away, their property could be seized… they’d just vanish. And, if they were lucky, the worst that would happen was that they spent the rest of their lives in a penal camp.
“Hundreds of worlds were exploited, stripped of natural resources to feed the Thousand Families. Entire planets became debt slaves to the corporations, their population forced to labour endlessly or die. Those who dared to rebel were crushed with overwhelming force, their lives destroyed by the Empire. Do you really think that some additional pain, now, is worse than what they have suffered over the centuries?
“Maybe it was understandable that no one resisted when resistance seemed futile. But now there is hope, now there is a Popular Front… and you, the rebel leader. Now, everyone who hates the Empire has someone to rally around. It will be costly — but will it be worse than leaving the Empire in place?”
She stopped, breathing hard.
“True,” Colin agreed. “But I still worry about the cost.”
“I think that proves you’re human,” Daria said. “Do you think the bureaucrats worry about the human cost?”
Colin shook his head. Entire planetary populations had been uprooted, families had been broken up and scattered across several different star systems — and that had been through a desire to rationalise the Empire’s work, not genuine malice. The Empire had done terrible things to planets that had revolted against central control, believing it needed to make examples out of resisters. Colin had seen a planet that had been bombarded back to the Stone Age and another that had been permanently deprived of technology. And that didn’t count the worlds that had simply been scorched clean of life.
It would grow worse, he knew, when the Thousand Families turned on themselves. They’d barely been expanding any more, at least until they’d discovered Jackson’s Folly. And if the Follies hadn’t looked like an easy target for exploitation, they might have been left alone.
“Good,” Daria said. “I worry too. But I also know that failing to swallow the medicine, no matter how unpleasant, will ensure that we do not succeed.”
Colin nodded, then finished his breakfast. It had astonished him, when he’d first transferred his flag to General Montgomery, to discover the sheer level of luxury Stacy Roosevelt had enjoyed. Her quarters had been crammed with artwork, showing a complete lack of taste, while she’d had over forty servants to tend to her needs. It said something about her, Colin had decided, that all of her servants had joined the rebellion the moment they’d been offered the chance. When he’d had a moment, he’d transferred the artwork to help with fundraising and thrown out most of the remaining decorations. The compartment still felt absurdly large for anyone, even an Admiral.
And how many officers, he asked himself, were only promoted because of their connections?
“We will succeed,” Colin told her, firmly. He changed the subject quickly. “Where’s your shadow?”