“So what,” Dave asked, “happens when the money runs out?”
His face twitched into a humourless smile. “The Thousand Families will start fighting over a shrinking pool of resources,” he answered his own question. “And then all hell will truly break loose. That’s why we have to terminate this rebellion as quickly as possible. The loss of Sector 117 is no great threat to the Empire, but it will make the edifice shiver and start to collapse. And then the whole Empire will collapse into debris?”
Penny said something that she would never have dared say in front of Percival. “Is that such a bad thing?”
Dave didn’t explode, or hit her. He just smiled. “Look at it this way,” he said. “The Empire, as bad as it is, is the only thing holding the edifice together. If the Empire breaks apart, trillions of people will lose everything — and that assumes that we don’t drop down all the way into civil war. There will be a colossal disaster right across human space. Billions will die.”
Penny sighed. “You don’t understand,” she said, tiredly. She remembered accessing — in private — the message the Popular Front had uploaded into the ICN. “The civil war is already here.”
The days on the small starship — it turned out that it was called the Hatta Mari, for reasons Dave refused to discuss — slowly started to blur together. Dave was amusing company and Penny did find herself with enough time to catch up on her reading. She also found herself joining him for evening viewing, where he showed her some of his collection of forbidden entertainments, some of which made her laugh. The Empire’s Public Entertainment Division simply didn’t amuse her like the forbidden shows. Dave was careful not to tell her where he’d obtained the recordings, although Penny found herself suspecting that he had some pretty extreme connections of his own. He certainly didn’t seem to be worried about her tattling on him to his superiors.
“It feels like a holiday,” she said, one evening. Her time sense was also starting to blur; the ship was making several jumps, followed by a pause to allow the drive to cool down and recharge. Nothing short of a courier boat could have matched the small starship’s pace and yet, Earth was still thousands of light years away. One day, she was sure, the researchers would find a way to flicker instantly anywhere… but probably not under the Empire. The Thousand Families discouraged technological advancement. “Is that what you had in mind?”
Dave smiled. “I wanted you to relax your mind,” he said. “You’re too stressed to be of much good to my patrons, so I wanted you to relax.”
Penny smiled back. It was odd how relaxed she felt in his company. “And I’m sure that you had no ulterior motives,” she said, wryly. Dave chuckled. “How do you think we will fight the war?”
Dave shook his head. “I think that for us the war is over,” he said, deadpan. It had been a catchphrase on one of his entertainment shows. “It all hangs on the Thousand Families and Earth now. If we don’t convince them…”
Penny made up her mind and reached for him, pulling him towards her for a kiss. Dave turned and kissed her back, his mouth exploring hers, even though there was a sort of curious dispassion in his act. Percival had wanted her to submit; Brent-Cochrane had wanted to mark his territory… but Dave’s reactions were different. And, somehow, having chosen to have sex with him herself made all the difference to her. She made love to him with all the passion and fury that she could muster.
Afterwards, she lay back in his arms and knew that he was right. For the moment, for her at least, the war was over.
Chapter Fifty
“The war is not over,” Admiral Quintana insisted. The short portly CO of Sector 99 bristled with firm determination. “The loss of Camelot only pins them to one location.”
Brent-Cochrane couldn’t disagree with the logic. Admiral Quintana’s sector fleet had paused long enough to stop at one of the relay stations — a precaution Brent-Cochrane had suggested — and discovered to their horror that Camelot had fallen. It was impossible to believe that the rebels possessed nearly ninety superdreadnaughts — it would have required capturing and crewing the squadrons from the seven nearest sectors — yet how had they produced such a massive missile salvo? He wanted to hate Percival for throwing away his ships, but how could anyone have anticipated such a meatgrinder?
Admiral Quintana carried on, ignoring his subordinate’s concerns. “The rebels will have to maintain their fleet at Camelot or we will just walk in and repossess the system,” he said. He’d been saying it again and again since they’d found out about the Battle of Camelot, as if he was desperately trying to convince Brent-Cochrane — or himself — of the truth of his words. “We will go in, prepared for such a huge salvo, and retake the system.”
Brent-Cochrane chuckled darkly. “And how does one prepare for such a large salvo?”
“We get the hell out of its way,” Admiral Quintana said, dryly. Brent-Cochrane laughed, more to himself than to anyone else. The only realistic defence against such an attack was not to be there when the missiles started to home in on one’s position. Percival’s superdreadnaughts hadn’t had their flicker drives spun up and ready, probably concerned about wear and tear on the generators. It would be just like Percival to thank a victorious officer by demoting him for not taking care of his ships. “We jump into the system here” — his finger stabbed at the display — “and advance in normal space. The rebels will have plenty of time to see us coming, but we’ll use the time to keep our drives humming, ready to spin up and jump us some distance from their target. And then we will see how many salvos they can fire.”
Brent-Cochrane frowned. It wasn’t bad logic, as logic went; indeed, if the massive salvos were a one-shot weapon, it should work quite well. The rebels might have added additional external racks to their superdreadnaughts, or perhaps they’d loaded missile pods onto freighters and smaller ships. No one had managed to get the missile pod concept to work, but if anyone could, the Geeks could do it. Missile pods were always fouled by the drive field, yet… his mind tossed and turned the possibility around for a few seconds, before dismissing it. Someone with more experience of starships and weapons design would have to consider it.
He shook his head. “And if the rebels do happen to have eighty superdreadnaughts?”
“We back off fast and scream for help,” Admiral Quintana said, shortly. Admitting defeat would be hard, but Brent-Cochrane knew that he had no connections to the Roosevelt Family. Whatever interest they had in Sector 117, it wouldn’t affect Admiral Quintana’s calculations — and he wouldn’t care about wreaking havoc in the sector, if necessary. The Imperial Navy could turn the tables and keep the rebels from forming a government until a massive fleet of superdreadnaughts was assembled and sent to spank those who had believed the rebels and their promises. “I doubt that it will come to that.”
“I hope you’re right,” Brent-Cochrane agreed. Watching sixteen superdreadnaughts get blown to plasma had shaken him more than he cared to admit. His own ship had been destroyed, along with commanders and crews he’d hand-picked for his own reasons. His scheming looked petty now, as if he’d been fiddling while the entire Empire burned around him. If it cost his career to end the rebellion now, it was worth it. “I really hope you’re right.”