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Colin shifted in his chair as the timer ticked down towards zero. He was aware, on some deep primal level, of the hopes and fears of his entire fleet. The ones who had joined the mutiny, the rebels who had known their cause was hopeless and fought on anyway, the men and women he had rescued from the penal world… they all knew that this would be the moment when the rebellion became a true threat to the Empire, or was destroyed, shattered beyond repair. Colin had never been a gambler — he had regarded it as a poor habit, although he had sometimes taken money off Percival at the gaming tables — yet he knew that this was a gamble. It was easy, looking at the oncoming enemy fleet, to wonder if the naysayer factions had been right.

“Activate the drones,” he ordered.

There were seventy-two drones deployed in a rough shell in front of the fleet, each one configured to present an image of a superdreadnaught to any passive sensors, or even active sensors at long range. The Geeks had invented them and Colin had tested them extensively against the best sensors his superdreadnaughts had, making sure that the Empire couldn’t separate a drone from a real ship. It seemed that it required active sensors at very close range to penetrate the deception.

Percival would know that it was a deception, of course. Colin might have had a low opinion of his intelligence, but it wasn’t that low. There was no way the rebels could have gotten their hands on seventy-two superdreadnaughts — eighty-one, counting the original ships — or Colin would have smashed Camelot and advanced on Earth, with very little in his way to stop him. But then, Colin had expected that too.

“All drones are active,” the tactical officer said. “They’ll be seeing them… about now.”

* * *

“Admiral,” the duty officer said, as the screen suddenly lit up with red icons. “We have new contacts… seventy-two additional superdreadnaughts!”

Percival’s voice cut through the chaos. “It’s a bluff,” he said, savagely. Penny blinked at the sudden decisiveness in his voice. “That’s how the bastard won at Khartoum.”

All of a sudden, it made sense. Back when Percival had been a mere Commodore, desperate to prove himself and win the coveted promotion to Admiral, he’d used Commander Walker to win an exercise. Penny had studied the battle and had been impressed; Commander Walker had used drones to lure the enemy forces out of position, then hit them when they were least expecting it. It had been a tactical masterstroke and Percival, at least, had good cause to remember it. Except…

“Admiral,” she said, slowly. “Wouldn’t he expect it too?”

Percival turned his chair to look up at her. “What do you mean?”

“He can’t have so many superdreadnaughts,” Penny said. “We know he can’t have so many superdreadnaughts, even if he had captured the entire sector fleet. So why is he playing a bluff he knows is going to be called?”

Percival said nothing, so she pressed her advantage. “Admiral, pull back the ships and combine their point defence with the battle stations,” she said. “If it’s a bluff, it won’t hurt us and if it’s covering for something…”

Percival slapped her, hard enough to send her rocking back on her heels. “He knows he’s walked into a meatgrinder,” Percival snarled. Penny barely heard him through the pain. He’d slapped her right in front of the entire command staff! He couldn’t have made her position as the Admiral’s Whore any clearer if he’d bent her over the tactical console and raped her from behind. “He’s trying to bluff us to win time to recharge his drives and flicker out. You are dismissed from my service. You will report to your quarters and wait there for reassignment. I will deal with you once the battle is won.”

Penny pulled herself to her feet, held herself ramrod straight, and strode out of the command centre, refusing to look at anyone or rub her face. Oddly, part of her felt relieved. Wherever Percival sent her, at least she wouldn’t have to put up with his presence any longer.

And, as much as she hated to admit it, there was a good chance that the bastard might be right.

* * *

“They think they’re calling our bluff,” Colin said, with heavy satisfaction. Truthfully, it might not have made any difference if the Imperial Navy starships had started to retreat, but at least this way it prevented any possibility of having to fight both sections of the defences at once. “Prepare to fire.”

He settled back into his chair as the datanet updated, with the arsenal ships in the lead. It had taken a great deal of careful planning to program the firing sequence, although Colin privately suspected that at least some of that effort had been wasted. The KISS principle had to be observed.

“Fire,” he ordered.

Chapter Forty-Six

Commodore William knew that few regarded him as an adroit tactician. In his fifty-two years in the Imperial Navy, he had made few mistakes… but he had no great successes either. His advancement had been fuelled by connections — his patrons were quite happy to deal with a man of limited ambition — and considerable seniority. He’d been a Commodore for over thirteen years and knew that there would probably be no further promotions in his career. On the other hand, command of a superdreadnaught squadron was a shining mark in a career file. Who knew where it would lead after he retired?

He couldn’t disagree with Admiral Percival’s assessment of the situation. If the rebels had hijacked superdreadnaughts from another part of the Empire, he would have heard something about it, if only whispers passed down through the grapevine. The superdreadnaughts he was advancing towards couldn’t be real, even though they were the most advanced decoys he’d ever seen, which suggested that the remainder of the rebel fleet could be nothing more than drones too. If Commander Walker was actually trying to distract them while causing havoc elsewhere… well, at least he wouldn’t look bad. After Stacy Roosevelt had lost an entire squadron of superdreadnaughts to mutineers, it was hard to imagine anything that would have made him look worse.

“Commodore,” the tactical officer reported, “we are entering firing range.”

“Good,” Commodore William said. He wasn’t used to commanding sixteen superdreadnaughts instead of nine, but his officers were used to him and he had managed to add the newcomers into the datanet without causing undue disruption. Percival had ordered him to open fire as soon as he entered range, yet Commodore William intended to wait and see if he could separate the drones from the real starships. It was alarmingly possible that the original nine superdreadnaughts, the first ones to be detected, were drones and the real superdreadnaughts had been concealing themselves… or perhaps he was just driving himself mad with paranoia. There was no way to know for sure. “Prepare to engage…”

The display went mad as alarms howled through the massive ship. Thousands of missiles were spewing out of the enemy fleet, roaring towards his fleet. The superdreadnaughts were real! They had to be real. Nothing else could have produced that level of firepower, nothing else could account for it. The rebels had somehow obtained an entire fleet and were deploying it to attack Camelot. His thoughts raced round and round in circles, unable to accept what he was seeing. The rebels had done the impossible. They had assembled eighty-one superdreadnaughts with external racks and fired them in one massive volley.

He swallowed hard, cursing his own failure to order the drives powered up. He might have been able to escape, yet… that would only have meant disaster for him anyway. His career had just been destroyed, even with… it dawned on him that he wasn’t dealing with the real problem, but there was no way to deal with it, or escape so many missiles. He could pick off two-thirds of them with his point defence and the remaining third would be enough to obliterate his fleet. Sixteen superdreadnaughts were about to die and it was his fault!