He must have been a great commander, Patrick thought, as he finished his tray. The Imperial Navy must have been sorry to lose him.
Or maybe not, he added, in the privacy of his own mind. The qualities that made for a good commanding officer weren’t ones that the Imperial Navy always found reassuring. Perhaps they’d felt Cordova had had a personality cult even before he’d deserted the Imperial Navy or perhaps they’d suspected his loyalty. But they wouldn’t have assigned a scorching mission to a starship commander they didn’t trust. Even hardened sadists were known to balk at wiping an entire planet’s population out of existence. The Imperial Navy usually assigned such tasks to officers who had been properly conditioned beforehand, the ones who would obey orders without question, let alone doubts or scruples.
A hand fell on his shoulder and he jumped.
“The Captain wishes to see you in his office,” Maze informed him. “You will come with me now.”
Patrick nodded. Maze was a towering black woman, her skin pieced with countless pieces of jewellery. There was no mistaking her sheer strength or her loyalty to her commanding officer, even though Patrick would have bet good money that she hadn’t been an Imperial Navy officer before Cordova deserted the Navy. Her attitude certainly suggested otherwise.
He stood and allowed Maze to lead him through the ship’s corridors and into Officer Country. Unlike an Imperial Navy starship, the hatch connecting Officer Country to the rest of the ship was unguarded. It wasn’t even locked, despite being closed. Patrick wasn’t sure quite what to make of it. Was Cordova showing that he trusted his crew or was he making an entirely different statement?
Maze opened the hatch to Cordova’s cabin, without bothering to knock. Cordova was seated at his desk, examining a holographic star chart. He glanced up as they entered, then pointed to a seat. Patrick took the seat, then waited. Maze slipped out of the room as quietly as she’d entered, leaving them alone.
Patrick couldn’t help looking around the cabin. Cordova didn’t seem to be much of a packrat, unlike some Imperial Navy officers he’d known; the bulkheads were largely bare, save for a single photograph placed against one section. It showed a dozen men and women standing together, smiling at the camera. Patrick wondered if they were part of Cordova’s graduation class at the academy, but they were all wearing civilian clothes. Remarkably fine civilian clothes.
“The attack was a great success,” Cordova said. In private, he didn’t seem so inclined to project his personality as far as he could. Patrick couldn’t help wondering just how much of that personality was actually real. For all he knew, Imperial Navy officers were quite different in private. “We smashed the ships without losses.”
“Yes, sir,” Patrick said. He still disliked the thought of blasting unarmed and surrendering freighters, but there had been no time to take prisoners. “It was a glorious victory.”
Cordova eyed him sardonically, then nodded. “We will be moving further towards Earth within the hour,” he added. “The real question is where we go from there. Contact will have to be made with the underground. And then…”
He looked up at the star chart. “Where do we go from there?”
Patrick listened as Cordova outlined possibilities. “Earth itself is a possibility; we’d definitely panic the Thousand Bastards if we attacked within the Sol System. God knows it hasn’t happened for hundreds of years, even during the First Interstellar War. But that would also encourage them to see to their defences. Colin would not forgive us.”
He shrugged. “Wolf 359 is another possibility,” he added. “Or Terra Nova. But both of them carry their own risks.”
“Wolf 359 is a Class-III shipyard,” Patrick pointed out. “If it could be taken intact…”
“I doubt it,” Cordova said. “And even if we did, we couldn’t hold it. But destroying the facility might be worthwhile.”
They talked for nearly an hour, discussing possibilities. In the end, they agreed that Wolf 359 would be an acceptable target, although it would need to be planned carefully. The shipyards were heavily defended even before the rebellion began.
“I meant to ask,” Patrick said, as Cordova poured them both a glass of rotgut. “Why did you spare the planet?”
Cordova gave him a sharp glance, as if Patrick had just touched a nerve.
“Because they didn’t deserve to die,” he said, finally. “Because they were sentenced to death, just for existing. And because they didn’t deserve to die.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“You need to wake up,” Gaunt snapped. “This base may have been compromised.”
Adeeba snapped awake. Thankfully, she’d slept in her clothes. One hand picked up her pistol from where she’d placed it beside her mattress, the other grabbed for her emergency pack and slung it over her shoulder. Frandsen, unsurprisingly, was already awake. The Marine managed to look disgustingly alert, despite the hour.
“Joy,” Adeeba muttered. A glance at her watch told her that it was three in the morning. “What happened?”
“Someone probably got caught,” Gaunt said. She turned and strode towards the door. “The imps would have made them talk, then killed them. If that person had an inkling of this base’s location…”
Adeeba could fill in the rest. The imps had taken longer than she’d expected to realise that there was a coordinated sabotage campaign underway on Earth. but once they’d cottoned on they’d started to tighten security and start hunting for underground bases. Security forces had been sweeping the lower levels, while new procedures had forced underground agents to go silent in the hopes of evading detection. Earth was the one world where the imps couldn’t risk excessive brutality, but they seemed mad enough not to care.
Gaunt led them out the door and down a long concrete corridor. Adeeba felt her ears pop as the air pressure changed suddenly, then winced as they reached a solid wall. Gaunt snorted at her and pressed her hand against a certain place. There was a clicking noise and the wall moved out of their way, allowing them to step through into the next section. Inside, there was a long metallic pipe heading into the darkness.
“Take these,” Gaunt said, opening a hidden compartment and producing a handful of night-vision goggles. “Do you know how to swim?”
Adeeba blinked in surprise. “Swim?”
“We need to swim further on,” Gaunt said. The ground shook, suddenly. “And if you don’t know, I suggest you get ready to learn.”
“I can swim,” Adeeba said. She’d learned at the academy, along with a number of other skills she’d deemed useless in space. “But why…?”
“Officially, this complex ends here,” Gaunt said. “Unofficially, there’s a link between this one and the next. But only if you can swim.”
The ground shook, again. “And they’re on their way,” she added. “Some of our people are going to sell their lives dearly. I just wish I was with them now.”
The lower levels of the city had always given Lieutenant Jackson Robertson the creeps. It was impossible to tell that humans had once lived there, not when the area was damp, smelly and largely abandoned. Sure, there were people who eked out an existence in the lower levels, but he couldn’t understand how they could bear to live like that. But their presence provided cover for the underground…
“Sweep carefully,” he ordered, as the Blackshirts led the way into the complex. The charts they’d downloaded before commencing the raid were inaccurate, they’d already discovered the hard way. Someone had been changing the interior of the complex, redesigning it to suit themselves. “And watch out for traps.”