Probably they prefer to whine instead of actually doing something to improve their lives, Jackson thought, as the Blackshirts returned to the centre of the complex. It had been certified IED-free after a quick check. Or knock us down rather than build themselves up…
There was a dull rumble in the distance. Jackson blinked in surprise, wondering if someone had discovered another IED, then frowned as he realised that the rumbling was actually getting closer. Had the bastards managed to collapse the ceiling? It was solid, according to the briefing; the city’s designers had made it’s foundations out of the strongest material they’d had at the time. It would take a nuke to do real damage…
And then he saw the water, rushing through the corridors and coming right at him.
There was no time to sound the alert or to grab hold of something solid. The water struck with the force of a tidal wave, picking him up and effortlessly slamming him against the far wall. He heard his armour crack, the impact stunning him; moments later, he felt cold water drifting up his body and into his mask. There was another crash…
And then there was nothing. Nothing, but darkness.
“There was an ancient water storage chamber down there,” the security officer explained, reluctantly. “They must have had it mined, ready to explode. Once the Blackshirts relaxed, the underground triggered the explosives and dumped a few thousand tons of water into the complex. Any clues left behind will be gone now.”
“Along with several thousand Blackshirts,” Tiberius said. He’d watched through the network as the Blackshirts invested the rebel base. By the time the water had reached its zenith, most of the investing forces had been drowned. “This will cause interesting problems for us, won’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” the security officer said.
Tiberius masked his reaction with an effort. The underground had not only pulled off a successful campaign, they’d managed to lure a vast number of Blackshirts into a trap — or at least that was how they were certain to explain it. They might have been inconvenienced, but the Blackshirts had taken a bloody nose. It was quite likely that the underground would get thousands of new recruits on Earth — and probably hundreds more off-world. The sabotage campaign had already spread to Mars, Titan and Io. How bad could it get in future?
He disconnected from the network, then looked at the report from Admiral Foster. The aged Admiral was trying, at least, to clean out the corruption in Home Fleet. But it wasn’t an easy task when telling the difference between patronage and outright corruption was difficult. And, unlike Admiral Wachter, Admiral Foster’s victims had the Families Council on Earth to complain to. Their patrons had to intervene on their behalf.
We need a unified front, Tiberius thought. If we all made the same response, the clients would behave themselves. We could move them to safer places and keep them out of the front line.
But it was the age-old problem. A patron had to support his client or the client would take his services elsewhere. Tiberius’s assistants had told him that they’d received several offers from senior officers who felt betrayed by their former patrons. It would have been a good time to expand his own networks if he hadn’t been more worried about the state of Home Fleet. By his most optimistic calculations, the rebels were three months away. If they realised just how weak Home Fleet was, they might bypass Morrison altogether and strike directly at Earth. They might win the war easily.
Admiral Foster had proposed swapping one of his superdreadnaught squadrons for one of Admiral Wachter’s squadrons. Reading between the lines, Tiberius suspected he meant that he intended to give Admiral Wachter the task of reassigning or relieving the corrupt officers while taking advantage of Admiral Wachter’s purge. In theory, it wasn’t a problem; in practice, it was likely to pose a major headache. What if Admiral Wachter objected to losing a squadron he had trained into something resembling acceptable condition?
“Damn it,” Tiberius swore, out loud. He picked up the datapad in frustration and threw it across the room, aiming at the portrait of a nobleman with an impossibly firm jaw. It missed, slamming against the wall and crashing to the floor. “Damn it all!”
Sharon stepped inside, one eyebrow raised. “Are you all right, My Lord?”
“Just… frustrated,” Tiberius said. “Why is it that every time we find a solution to one problem it brings another couple of problems in its wake?”
“There is no such thing as a perfect solution,” Sharon said. “And people tend to react to what you do.”
Tiberius placed his head in his hands. Morrison needed to be prepared for war, so they’d appointed someone with an unprecedented amount of authority — and now they had to worry about his reaction to their decisions. Home Fleet needed to be prepared for war — and now they had to be careful how they treated their clients, for fear of rebellion or even just accidentally destroying the patronage networks. Earth needed to be secured against the underground — and now everything had slowed down to allow security checks to take place, just when they needed to ramp up industrial production. And they had to clean out corruption… while knowing the officers they needed to keep were also the ones they needed to remove.
“It’s too much,” he said, bitterly. “Is there any way we can actually win?”
“Admiral Wachter might pull off a victory,” Sharon pointed out. “And besides, just how badly has the underground hurt you?”
Tiberius considered it. They’d been hurt — but they’d been embarrassed more than hurt. All of the major families had been targeted, which made it harder for them to point fingers at Tiberius in particular…
He shook his head. Normally, they could just pick up the pieces and rebuild. But now they had to do several things at once, in the midst of a war. He had no idea how the Empire had managed to do it during the First Interstellar War. But then, the Empire had been new then, barely established. It had taken years for the rot to set in.
But he had to deal with the rot.
“Badly enough,” he said. “Perhaps we should offer more colony incentives.”
“Perhaps you should relax,” Sharon said. “You’re taking too much on yourself.”
“And if I rely on others, they’ll try to steal the family out from under me,” Tiberius countered. He shook his head. “Call a pleasure slave, then hold my calls. I’ll try to relax for an hour.”
But he knew, no matter how much he tried to forget, reality wouldn’t go away.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“The combat drill was a success, Commodore.”
Commodore Sahrye Yamani nodded. The battlecruiser squadron had only been hers for a month, following Admiral Wachter’s decision to remove the squadron’s former commander for gross incompetence, neglect and corruption. Sahrye hadn’t expected her promotion — she had no senior patron — but she didn’t intend to let the Admiral down. Besides, he’d told her that she would keep the squadron if she did well.
“Get me the full results,” she ordered. “And single out the gunnery crews that performed well.”
She smiled. If there was any advantage to lurking in interstellar space, three light years from the nearest inhabited world, it was the chance to drill her ships without the Admiral looking over her shoulder. The squadron had performed dreadfully in the first live-fire exercises held at Morrison, but Sahrye intended to ensure that next time would be different. They might do well enough to ensure that their crews weren’t reshuffled again by the Admiral.