Colin tapped the file, marking it — and the crewwoman — for later attention, and went on to the next file. He’d reasoned that if he read the secure files and noted the crewmen who had bad reports from their superiors, those crewmen would make ideal recruits for the rebels and he could recruit them. The crewmen who had good reports might be less trustworthy, although Colin knew that the reports themselves weren’t exactly perfect. One of the comments in his own file had come from a superior officer Colin had only met once, back before he’d accepted Admiral Percival’s offer of patronage. It hadn’t been a pleasant comment, which struck Colin as vaguely amusing; he’d barely remembered the meeting himself.
An hour later, he put the file aside and stared around the bridge. The superdreadnaught’s flag bridge was massive, as befitted a command ship and one of the most powerful starships in the Empire, but Colin found it oddly exposed. Even the battlecruiser’s bridge had been more cramped than the superdreadnaught’s. Dozens of consoles were scattered around, each one manned by a crewman, including several that Colin had transferred from the Observation Squadron. They’d spent the last few days drilling endlessly until Colin was fairly sure that the fleet could operate as a unit, although they wouldn’t know for sure until they went into battle, or at least conducted some live-fire drills. They would have to wait until they’d secured the Annual Fleet and then escaped out beyond the Rim. And once the fleet was there…
Don’t count your chickens before they have hatched, he reminded himself, as he studied the massive holographic display floating in the centre of the bridge. Camelot’s star, an oddly-variable G2 star, was a bare two light years away. On a human scale, it might as well have been on the other side of the galaxy, but anyone who graduated from the Imperial Navy’s Academy — to say nothing of the far-tougher OCS — would know just how stellar geography played a role in naval combat. It was quite possible that Admiral Percival’s Sector Fleet would be able to respond to a distress call from the Annual Fleet — one brought by a destroyer or picket boat that escaped the attack — and get there in time to wreck Colin’s plan. Colin would have preferred to attack at the fleet’s last waypoint, but Stacy Roosevelt’s timing had been inconvenient. And, of course, once the fleet arrived at Camelot, attacking it would be impossible.
He clicked his wristcom and brought up a display he’d programmed into it the day they’d flickered out, away from Jackson’s Folly. The bulk freighter he’d given to the loyalists had been carefully selected, for its flicker drive was in poor condition. It was perfectly safe, it would just take Stacy and the rest of the loyalists at least two weeks to return to Camelot, four days after Colin ambushed the Annual Fleet. The vindictive side of his nature kept reminding him that he could have programmed the ship to take the loyalists straight into the local sun, but he forced it down. A mass slaughter, he kept telling himself, would only make it harder for others to surrender.
“Admiral, the drills have been completed,” Flag Captain Jeremy Damiani reported. Stacy Roosevelt’s former Flag Captain had volunteered to serve with the rebels — and, after reading his file, Colin had understood why. Stacy had poured so much poison into his file that Damiani didn’t have a hope of transferring to any other position — or patron. Colin wasn’t entirely sure if he trusted the man, but he was short on experienced officers and besides, there were armed Marines scattered throughout the superdreadnaught. “Your ship is ready for battle.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Colin said, gravely. It felt weird to be called Admiral, yet he’d taken the title for himself. It also felt bittersweet. He would never command a starship again, lord and master under God; he would never know the joys and sorrows of independent command. He was devoted to his cause — after everything he’d done, the Empire would never forgive him or his followers — yet part of him still wanted to command. “Are the external racks loaded and deployed?”
“Yes, Admiral,” Damiani said. “We are ready for Sucker Punch.”
Colin felt an odd twinge of guilt at his words. He cared very little for the commanding officers of the Annual Fleet, but he cared a great deal about the crewmen onboard the ships. Many of them — indeed, perhaps most of them — would want to join the rebels, if they were offered the chance. Colin didn’t dare offer them that chance. A freighter might take hours to repower its drive and flicker out, leaving the freighters sitting ducks for his fleet, but the same couldn’t be said of the military ships escorting the civilian vessels. A destroyer or a courier boat would only need a few minutes to repower and spin up the flicker drive, jumping to Camelot to alert Admiral Percival. Colin held Percival in the deepest of contempt, yet even he would react quickly to anything threatening the Annual Fleet. He didn’t dare risk allowing anyone to sound the alarm, which meant that he had to destroy the escorts as quickly as possible, without offering or accepting surrender.
You’re a hypocrite, he told himself, tartly. You say that you don’t want to engage in mass slaughter, yet you are willing to plan the deaths of hundreds of thousands just to ensure that you can loot the fleet in peace.
He shook his head, dismissing the thought. “Good,” he said, instead. He glanced down at the display. It was empty, apart from the shaded icons representing his fleet, lurking under cloaking fields. The second they opened fire, the escorts would know that they were there and even where they were, but by then it would be far too late. Or so Colin hoped. If there was one other lesson that was pummelled into the heads of young cadets at the Academy, it was KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. The simpler an operational plan, they’d been told, the less that could go spectacularly wrong. “And all we have to do now is wait.”
“Yes, sir,” Damiani said. “Admiral… how long are we going to wait?”
Colin understood his concern. The information they’d recovered from Stacy Roosevelt’s files had been the latest she’d had, but it had been nine months out of date when it had been sent to her. It was quite possible that the Annual Fleet’s commander had decided to change the waypoint coordinates, or even decided to risk jumping from their last waypoint direct to Camelot. Colin and his rebel fleet could wait for weeks without knowing what had happened, or that they’d missed their target.
“As long as it takes,” Colin said. It wasn’t entirely hopeless. One of Daria’s ships had the Camelot System under permanent observation. They’d know if the Annual Fleet arrived and that the rebels had missed their chance. “We lose this and we have to go back to Plan B.”
Damiani frowned. “Plan B?”
“I’m still working on it,” Colin admitted. He had a contingency plan, but it wasn’t one he wanted to share, not yet. “Without the Annual Fleet, we’d take much longer to build up a rebel fleet…”
“Admiral,” the tactical officer barked. “Contacts! I have multiple starships, flickering in right on top of us!”
Colin braced himself as new red icons flared into existence on the display. The tactical computers were already categorising them, separating the freighters from their escorts, before assigning new targeting priorities to the datanet. The superdreadnaughts and battlecruisers were already linked together; now, with their targets finally in range, they were targeting the enemy ships and preparing to fire.