Chapter Nine
Morrison had a long and illustrious history, Penny knew. It had been a naval base before there had actually been an Imperial Navy, then a staging post during the Great Interstellar War. Later, it had served as a base for the Empire’s absorption of all known human colony worlds, only to become less important as the borders were pushed further and further away. Even so, it was still an immense facility. Morrison itself was surrounded by asteroid settlements, shipyards and industrial nodes, while the gas giant had a dozen cloudscoops and other facilities in orbit. She couldn’t help feeling impressed at the sheer level of activity in the system.
Admiral Wachter seemed less impressed as the fleet headed towards the massive orbital fortress that served as System Command. And, as she watched, Penny understood why. The squadron should have been challenged at once, the moment they flickered into the system. No challenge had been forthcoming, nor had the defences gone to full alert. The Admiral snorted in disapproval, then keyed into the system and started to read his way through the full reports. He looked up five minutes later.
“Dispatch inspection teams to the fortresses, the reserves and a random number of starships,” he ordered. “Concentrate on the heavier ships, but pick them at random.”
“Yes, sir,” Penny said, gratified that her voice remained steady. A month in transit had given her time to recover, although she still had panic attacks from time to time. The Admiral expected her to think, but he didn’t expect her to stress herself out too much. “I’ll send the teams at once.”
“Then call a full gathering of senior officers — captains and higher — to take place on my ship, five hours from now,” Wachter added. “Inform them that attendance is mandatory. Anyone who doesn’t attend can save time by handing in their resignation.”
Penny surprised herself by giggling. “They’re not going to believe it,” she pointed out. It was hard to fire a senior officer, particularly one with high-ranking patrons. “They might be defiant…”
“Good,” Wachter said. He swung his console over so she could see what he saw. “Just looking from the outside is enough to tell me that someone has been quite hellishly incompetent. Quite a few people, in fact. If the rebels attacked the system, now, I’d expect the defenders to lose.”
His eyes narrowed as he looked down at the display. “Heads are going to roll,” he added. “And I mean that literally.”
Penny nodded, then started to organise the gathering. As she had expected, it wasn’t easy to convince everyone to attend. Most of Morrison’s higher ranks had been there long enough to think themselves immovable, while their juniors were too intimidated or apathetic to care what their seniors did. She wasn’t too surprised. Morrison might once have been a great naval base, but it had been thousands of light years behind the border for too long. By the time the meeting was meant to take place, she was having wistful thoughts about a rebel attack.
“Wear your dress uniform,” Wachter ordered, as they prepared for the gathering. “And take your service pistol with you.”
Penny had been astonished to discover just how many senior officers there were attached to Morrison. There were over five hundred captains, commodores and admirals in the system, half of whom seemed to be redundant. Only two hundred captains even commanded a starship. As several of those ships were listed as being part of the reserve, it was quite likely that they were only in nominal command. It hadn’t stopped them from collecting the salaries attached to the positions.
The compartment was normally used for fleet-level briefings, where over a hundred officers might gather to hear their commander speak. It was the largest compartment on the superdreadnaught, yet cramming so many officer inside was impossible. Penny had finally been forced to separate the lower-ranking officers from their commanders, assigning them to smaller compartments. The whole briefing was going to be broadcast to the entire system anyway — Wachter had insisted — but the attendees hadn’t been told about it. They might have used it as an excuse not to attend in person.
Wachter strode into the compartment and stepped onto the podium, glaring down at the assembled officers. Penny followed him into the compartment, then stood at the edge of the room, beside an armed and armoured Marine. There was an entire company of Marines on alert, just in case the officers decided to get rowdy. Wachter had insisted, despite Penny’s doubts that the officers would offer violence. Unlike Percival, he hadn’t snapped at her for offering her opinion.
“For those of you who don’t know me,” Wachter said, “I am Admiral Joshua Wachter, your new commanding officer. I assume that some of you, at least, have had the sense to access my file once you heard I was taking command. Those of you will know that I have no patience for idiots, I don’t suffer fools gladly and I am absolute death on corruption. This base is supposed to be the linchpin of Earth’s defences, the final barrier between an outside threat and the Core Worlds. And this base is in terrible condition.”
He tapped off points on his fingers, one by one. “Starships in the reserve have been cannibalised, allowed to decay or simply sold off, existing only on paper. Orbital defences have been allowed to weaken to nothingness. Starship maintenance cycles have been abandoned. Spare parts have been sold off to civilian interests while military crews have been forced to scrounge for enough replacements to keep their starships at a barely functional level. High-ranking officers are paid for doing nothing, as far as I can see, while junior officers and crewmen have been deprived of their pay for weeks or months. And quite a few experienced crewmen have been booted out of the navy, even though we desperately need their skills.”
There was a long pause. “Would any of you care to dispute that assessment?”
Penny rather doubted that anyone would. She was right.
“I checked the accounts too,” Wachter added. “Credits have been assigned to procuring pleasure slaves and prostitutes, while starships and orbital fortresses have been deprived of their discretionary funds. Vast sums of money seem to have vanished without trace. Tell me something, if you would be so kind. Just why did you think you could get away with it for so long?”
His voice dripped sarcasm. “Oh, I can guess,” he mocked. “You believed that your patrons would protect you. Perhaps you were giving them a cut of the proceeds. Perhaps you thought that you were satisfying their desires. And perhaps you thought Morrison would never have to go back on a war footing. Well, you were wrong!
“Rebels have taken Sector 117. By now, they will have taken several more sectors — and they will be advancing towards us. They will have no choice. And, if the situation in this system continues, they will overrun the planet and its defences with ease, before advancing onwards to Earth. It will not happen. I will not let it happen.”
His voice hardened. “A third of you have already been marked down as hopelessly, stupidly corrupt. I say stupidly because you didn’t even show the intelligence of a parasite, one smart enough to know it would die when its host died. This isn’t favour-trading, this isn’t simply skimming some money off the top of a contract, this is outright treason! And you will be removed from your positions, stripped of your ranks and dumped on a penal colony. Your patrons will not lift a single finger to save you.”
Penny watched as the Marines flowed through the room, hunting for the people on the list and removing them. There was little resistance, not when the Marines wore light combat armour and carried stunners. The officers who had been spared were staring at Wachter with a strange mixture of emotions on their faces; fear, awe, even a certain amount of respect. But Penny knew that it wasn’t over yet.