“We are not under your command,” Smyth hissed. “Imperial Intelligence doesn’t answer to you.”
“I have authority directly from the Families Council,” Wachter countered. “Do you answer to them?”
Smyth hesitated, suddenly very aware of the dangerous waters surrounding him. Penny felt a moment of sympathy, which rapidly faded away as she recalled what Imperial Intelligence had done to her in their search for a scapegoat. The Families Council might be worried about what Wachter would do with the Morrison Fleet, but they would be equally nervous about Imperial Intelligence. Besides, it would take a month to get a message to Earth. By then, the battle for Morrison might well have been fought.
“I will formally protest this to my superiors,” he said, finally. “But you can take the prisoners.”
“Thank you,” Wachter said, with mocking politeness. “Once the Marines arrive, have them transferred to Station Seven. Gently, mind you. I don’t want any of them to accidentally expire.”
“They may well have been conditioned,” Smyth warned. “I must ask you not to let them anywhere sensitive.”
“They will be watched,” Wachter assured him. He turned and marched towards the hatch. “Penny; come.”
He didn’t say another word until they were back in the shuttle, heading back towards General Clive. “That man will cost us the war if he isn’t careful,” he snapped. “It wouldn’t take long for rumours to start to spread.”
“Yes, sir,” Penny said. She shook her head in admiration. “Did you really intend to have the Marines storm the station?”
“People are playing political games,” Wachter reminded her. “First Captain Solomon — he’s a Rothschild client if I recall correctly — and now Imperial Intelligence. They’re quite desperate to avoid the blame for missing the warning signs before the first mutiny.”
Penny scowled. “Were there any to see?”
“A large conspiracy could not have been kept secret indefinitely,” Wachter said. “And everything we know about the first set of mutinies confirms that they were planned carefully in advance. I’d bet half my salary that the security officer on the squadron was either breathtakingly incompetent or up to his neck in the plot.”
“I thought they were conditioned into absolute loyalty,” Penny objected. “Or could the conditioning be broken?”
“Not someone like that,” Wachter said. “Or Smyth, for that matter. A conditioned officer has little imagination or initiative. He might react to something obvious, but miss something dangerously subtle. No, the security officer was probably involved in the mutiny. It’s the only explanation that makes sense.”
Penny shook her head in disbelief. She was used to thinking of Imperial Intelligence as something more than human, a vast implacable force that supervised their lives and watched for the merest sniff of discontent. But cold logic told her that Imperial Intelligence was far from perfect. They’d completely missed the planned mutiny until it was far too late. Even in hindsight, the clues were hard to see.
“They’re human,” Wachter reminded her. He tapped the shuttle’s bulkhead gently. “No matter their power and authority, they’re human. And humans make mistakes — or have hopes, dreams and ambitions that get stepped on by their superiors. That’s why the mutiny took place. And that’s why we cannot allow Imperial Intelligence to overstep its bounds any longer.”
Penny nodded, wordlessly.
Wachter reached out and placed a hand on her shoulder. “You did well, in there.”
“Thank you,” Penny said, feeling her cheeks heat. “So did you.”
The intercom buzzed. “Admiral, Commodore Yamani and the 234th Battlecruiser Squadron have returned to the system,” Commander Cain said. “They encountered the rebels at Parallax.”
“A week away,” Wachter said, quietly. “They could be here any minute.”
Penny felt cold ice congealing in her belly. She’d worked hard — they’d all worked hard — to repair the damage neglect, incompetence and corruption had done to the fleet, but now they were about to face a proper test. The rebels would be out for blood.
“Alert everyone on the main command team,” Wachter ordered. “I want a holographic conference in one hour.”
He closed the channel, then looked up at Penny.
“It’s time to bait the trap,” he told her. “And then we will see who emerges victorious.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
“That’s impressive,” Daria said, quietly.
Colin couldn’t help nodding in agreement. Morrison was impressive. The naval base had been built up over centuries and had everything apart from a Class-III shipyard; industrial node, repair yards, orbital defences… and facilities on the ground for rest and recreation. It had been years since he had last visited the system — and that had been a very brief layover before his assignment to then-Commodore Percival — but it was clear from a glance that someone was working desperately to get the system’s defences up and running.
“Fifty-nine superdreadnaughts, nearly three hundred smaller ships,” Colin said. “Thirty-five orbital fortresses, an uncountable number of automated platforms and hundreds of additional gunboats. Morrison itself would be damn near impregnable if all of those defences are up and running.”
“They might not be,” Damiani pointed out. Colin had combined the two fleets into one large force for the attack on Morrison. “We have a good idea just how far the system had been allowed to decay. Even with the best will in the world, it would take years to repair all the damage.”
“But we dare not take that for granted,” Colin said. The scouts hadn’t been able to slip too close to the planet, but what they’d found had been thoroughly intimidating. “And yet we dare not leave Morrison in our rear.”
The mystery commander — it still irked him that they didn’t know who they were facing — seemed to be playing it carefully. He’d held most of his ships within the planet’s gravity shadow, which limited their ability to escape… but combined with the planet’s massive defences, it would be difficult to damage them in any case. Colin knew, without false modesty, that he could tear up the rest of the system without difficulty, yet it wouldn’t make a difference. The planet’s orbital facilities and the fleet had to be destroyed as soon as possible.
Or were the ships there because they couldn’t move?
Colin had been through all the reports, piece by piece. They all agreed that Morrison had been allowed to decay, something that had jibed with his own observations. After all, if Stacy Roosevelt’s squadron could skimp on maintenance, why not a squadron that was never called upon to do anything more challenging than float in orbit and look intimidating? But he knew better than to assume that was the case. The enemy seemed determined to lure him down to face the combined firepower of both ships and orbital fortresses. It might well succeed, too.
He gritted his teeth. They couldn’t leave Morrison in their rear. He knew it… and he knew that the enemy commander knew it too. He had no choice, but to engage the planet’s defences, even though they would be armed and waiting for him. It was odd, given how flexible space travel was, to have to engage a specific target… and yet, there was no choice.