“Welcome back to the living,” a voice said. She looked up to see a man sitting by the side of her bunk, a man she didn’t recognise. He was a tall lanky fellow, with short untameable hair and long delicate hands. He couldn’t have been more different from Percival. “How are you feeling?”
“Awful,” Penny said. Her voice sounded thick in her own ears. “Where am I?”
“All in good time, my dear,” the man said. He reached out to touch the band around her wrist and she realised that it was a medical sensor. “You need a shower and a change and then we will talk.” He nodded towards a pile of clothes on a small table as he stood up. “I’ll leave you alone now, but you’re not stupid enough to believe that you are unobserved.”
Penny watched him go, before she managed to stand up and stagger towards the tiny bathroom. As promised, there was a small shower waiting for her. Undressing was a hassle, but her own curiosity pushed her onwards. Wherever the ship was taking her — and she was sure that she was on a starship — it had to be better than Camelot.
Chapter Forty-Eight
The Empire recognised no right to privacy, Colin knew; unless one happened to be very well-born, a person could be watched at any time by Imperial Intelligence, often for no other reason than because the officer in charge wanted to spy on a pretty girl. It was a power that was often abused, yet few cared enough to try to fix it. The station’s brig therefore included monitors that allowed him to watch the prisoners with no fear of them sensing his gaze.
Percival had been treated badly by his subordinates, according to the medic who had inspected him and treated his wounds. Quite apart from the blow that had knocked him out, it had been clear that he had been kicked several times, including one kick that had caved in a couple of ribs. The medic had fixed most of the damage easily, yet it would be a long time before Percival recovered. He sat on the bunk in the brig, his hands cuffed together and attached to the deck, his piggish eyes staring at nothing. He was no longer the proud confident figure the young Colin had admired, or the older arrogant asshole that had been so confident that Colin could be used and then thrown away, without any hope at all of extracting retribution.
Colin felt the pistol at his belt and scowled. No one would stop him if he wanted to walk into the brig, draw his pistol and shoot Percival through the head. He could shoot him, or beat him to death with his bare hands, or strangle him, or throw him out of an airlock… there were so many possibilities. No one would object if he wanted to spend the next few hours torturing his nemesis, inflicting horrific damage and then allowing the medics to heal Percival, before Colin tortured him again. He doubted that Percival had a single friend in the entire system. The fact that his own subordinates had turned on him at the end suggested that he had never changed, that he had never realised the need to cultivate respect and loyalty. The same uncaring attitude, that the lower orders existed only to be used and then thrown aside, that had led him to try to destroy Colin had led right to Percival’s final defeat. Let him squirm as he may, Colin knew; there was no way that the Empire would forgive him. The man who had lost control over an entire sector had no future.
His thoughts tormented him. How many times had he dreamed about killing Percival? When he’d been trapped on the patrol base, with few prospects for escape or advancement, he had plotted hundreds of ways to kill his tormentor. The dark vindictive fantasies had kept him going, from the moment when he had sworn bloody revenge until he had made his grab for the Observation Squadron. Captain-Commodore Howell had died at Colin’s hands, the first of so many, killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why should he not kill Percival? Who would object if he chose to execute him on the spot?
Percival had grown fat over the years, Colin saw, even though removing the fat would have been the work of a few minutes in sickbay. His weight was a message in itself; Percival didn’t care what anyone else thought of his physical beauty, even though he was prepared to toady to anyone who had a higher social rank than his own. Colin had interviewed Commander Redfield and a handful of others and they had all agreed that Percival had been bedding Captain Quick, a woman who had provided the brains and tactical acumen Percival so desperately needed. She had vanished, apparently on a gunboat that had been able to flicker out while inside the station. Colin couldn’t blame her for running, yet there were too many unanswered questions surrounding her. The Imperial Navy banned gunboats and assault shuttles from trying to flicker out while inside a station or a starship. It was too easy for the jump to damage or destroy the mothership. The gunboat’s computers should have automatically prevented the jump from taking place.
Angrily, cursing his own weakness, Colin strode through the portal and into the brig. Percival looked up at him, his eyes going wide with a hint of fear and panic before he lowered them to the deck, trying to hide his feelings. It didn’t matter. Percival had rarely bothered to hide his feelings from his subordinates and he was out of practice. Colin saw it well before it could be hidden. He took the interrogator’s chair and sat, facing Percival.
“You’re a traitor,” Percival said, finally. Colin shivered, remembering the voice, the strange combination of a high-class accent from Earth and the broader accent of an Academy graduate. Percival must have hated losing the accent that had marked him as one of the Thousand Families, even though he was — by birth — only on the edge of High Society. He’d planned and schemed and fought to claw his way to the top, never caring about who got crushed underfoot. “My patrons will crush you for this.”
Colin snorted. “After everything else I have done,” he said, flatly, “don’t you think that they will have some trouble deciding what crime they’re actually going to execute me for?”
Percival didn’t see the joke. “You are tearing away at the Empire,” he said, softly. “Do you really feel that the rebel underground could run something the size of the Empire? They would tear the Empire apart within a week. We run the Empire because we can take the long view…”
Colin drew his pistol in one smooth motion and held it to Percival’s head. The Admiral’s eyes went very wide. He hadn’t believed that Colin would — or could — kill him. Percival had always been able to game the system and ensure that the outcome, whatever it was, allowed him to survive and prosper. But Colin was outside the system and was no longer bound by its rules. He could shoot and kill Percival; he could do anything to Percival. Colin sniffed in disgust. Percival was so scared that he’d lost control of his bladder.
“Tell me something,” Colin said, fighting down the urge to simply pull the trigger and put Percival out of everyone’s misery. “Do you really believe that mass murder and genocide helps preserve the Empire? You sent your ships to Jackson’s Folly and killed a fifth of the planet’s population. You crushed revolts and slaughtered people who wanted to choose their own way in life. You…”
Percival started to stammer. It took him a moment to speak clearly. “You fool,” he said, as if he expected Colin to pull the trigger at any moment. “The little people are incapable of running their own lives. How do you expect something the size of the Empire to survive if everyone is pulling in different directions? We have a duty to control them to save the Empire and preserve the human race.”