“With me,” he ordered, and led the final platoons towards the bridge. There were no internal monitors in the bridge itself, but he checked all around the bridge and saw only a handful of Blackshirts, preparing to give their lives in defence of their superior. He wondered, briefly, if Commodore Roosevelt would have the nerve to hit the self-destruct and destroy the ship, before putting the thought out of his mind. There was nothing he could do about it.
The faces of the hostages from the asteroid he’d invaded, the ones he had refused to kill, drifted in front of his mind. Whatever happened, perhaps he was now on the road to redemption.
“Commodore,” Jeremy said, “they have secured control of the internal security systems.”
Stacy barely looked at him. She had been throwing a tantrum for the last few minutes, one that the bridge crew had been trying to ignore, even though she was cursing them all as incompetents and fools who had allowed her ship to be boarded. Her slight form was shaking with rage; she’d already threatened to have the entire crew transferred to a penal world, hardly something to fill their minds with confidence and determination. If the bridge crew had been armed, he wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them had shot her in the head. He wasn’t sure that he would have blamed the murderer either.
“The ship is no longer secure,” Jeremy pushed. “We have to move out of this compartment and evacuate.”
“And go where?” Stacy asked. Her voice came in great gasps, a mark of her fear and growing panic. She ought to be using her command codes to purge the superdreadnaught’s databases, or even trigger the self-destruct, but she was too scared to think clearly. And, without her command codes, no one else on the squadron could render the ships useless. “Where can we go?”
Jeremy looked down at the main display. The transports were still decanting their troops, but it was clear to him that they would be too late. By the time they had their troops loaded into shuttles and dispatched to the superdreadnaughts, they would be in enemy hands. Even so, if he could get Stacy to a shuttle, he could get her to one of the transports and they could escape…
A treacherous thought floated through his mind. Did he have to get Stacy to a shuttle? The thought of abandoning her on the superdreadnaught was tempting, all the more so because his career was over anyway. The Imperial Navy would court-martial him for gross incompetence and the fact that it had been Stacy, not him, who had issued the orders wouldn’t cut any ice with them at all. And that was if he was lucky. If he was unlucky, Stacy’s family would ensure that the rest of his life would be on a penal world; nasty, brutish and short.
And, even if he saved her life, he didn’t think that she would be grateful.
“We can go to the transports,” he said, taking a second look at the display. The Observation Squadron, whatever had happened to it, had retreated out of firing range, preventing the superdreadnaughts from destroying their tormentors before it was too late. “They’re already spinning up their drives and preparing to flicker out. We can get onboard, flee this system and return with reinforcements.”
Stacy looked up at him. It took him a second to realise that, under the bluster, she was absolutely terrified. She was so scared that she was barely able to move, clinging onto the command chair as if it was the only security in an uncertain world. Sweat streaked her face as she looked away, ashamed of her own weakness.
“And then…?” She asked, so quietly that he could barely hear her. “What happens then?”
Jeremy opened his mouth to reply, but the bridge darkened suddenly, confirming that the engineering compartment had fallen to the intruders. He checked his terminal and swore as he realised that power — and control — was being rerouted, leaving the bridge operating on emergency power only. The background hum of the drive, so ever-present that he had long ago grown used to feeling it in his bones, started to ebb away. His ship was dying.
“We need to move,” he snapped. He reached for her arm and pulled her out of the command chair, even though he had never dared to touch her before. “Come on…”
A dull thump echoed outside the main hatch and Stacy froze. The intruders were right outside. Jeremy looked up, towards the access hatch to the internal tubes, which would allow them a second means of escape… if Stacy had the presence of mind to use it. It was too late. Before he could say, or do, anything, the communications officer touched the emergency release and the hatch jumped open. Four armoured figures strode into the compartment, weapons primed and ready.
“I’ll give you anything,” Stacy said. Jeremy realised in a sudden burst of amusement that she was pleading with their captors. “I can give you money or power or anything you want, just let me go unharmed and I will give you anything and…”
The armoured figure stunned her, leaving her body to fall against Jeremy and then crash to the deck. A moment later, Jeremy was stunned too. His last thought was of home… and of a family he hadn’t seen in years, ever since he had joined the Imperial Navy.
Neil looked down at Commodore Roosevelt and shook his head, not bothering to conceal his disgust. The girl — and she was almost as young as she looked, he knew — had failed in her duty, even her duty to her Family. She was very lucky that she hadn’t been captured by pirates. The last member of the Thousand Families to be captured by pirates had been bled dry and then executed when she could give them no more.
He checked the Marine datanet and smiled. All nine superdreadnaughts had been taken, although not without casualties. The mission had been a complete success.
Colin will be pleased, he thought, with wry amusement. And now the rebellion can begin.
Chapter Six
Colin knew that it was wrong of him, but he couldn’t resist, even though it might have consequences further down the line. Having taken over Howell’s office for himself, he had Stacy Roosevelt dragged before him in chains. It had been ten years since he had seen her in person and he was astonished at the change in her, her natural — and inbred — arrogance warring with her fear. Her eyes went very wide when she saw him, although he wasn’t sure if she recognised him from when he’d worked for Admiral Percival or if she had been briefed on him when she’d been assigned to Jackson’s Folly. The fear in her eyes was gratifying and Colin wallowed in it for longer than he should, before he straightened up and studied her thoughtfully.
The Marine Colonel had been right, Colin knew; Stacy Roosevelt was very lucky not to have been captured by pirates, or someone who had a grudge against her personally and no sense of restraint. Colin could have killed her with his bare hands, or thrown her into open space, or performed unspeakable abominations on her body — all things that had happened to others, on her command. There was a certain temptation, he had to admit, but he knew that giving into that temptation would make him no better than the Empire. Besides, he didn’t even have the excuse of interrogating her, for Stacy had sung like a canary. She had unlocked all of her secret files and surrendered her credit codes and other details. Colin considered, in the privacy of his own head, that this new Stacy was far more tolerable than the old version.
And she had no friends here. Almost all of her crew — almost all of the superdreadnaught crewmen — had volunteered to join the rebellion when they had been told what was going on. The Blackshirts had been making themselves unpopular on the superdreadnaughts and even hardened Empire loyalists hadn’t been quite so loyal. Colin had scattered the crews over the superdreadnaughts, and even over the former Observation Squadron, just to make it harder for any undiscovered agent, but he was fairly certain that most of the crew would be loyal. The command crews, at least, had too much experience of Stacy Roosevelt. Even her Flag Captain had volunteered to join the rebellion.