“Yes, sir,” Wilhelm said. Gunboats traditionally carried only two crewmen, in this case Markus and his wife Carola. The Imperial Navy didn’t discourage husband and wife from serving together, although having a pair in the same gunboat was unusual. Colin suspected that Wilhelm had paid someone a pretty hefty bribe back in the past. That, too, was not unusual. “It will be an easy mission.”
Colin smiled, concealing his concern. Gunboat pilots had a great deal in common with the pilots of assault shuttles, or Marines; if they had any doubts at all they never showed them to their superior officers. The remainder of the Imperial Navy joked that they were too stupid to feel fear, or even common sense. Colin had long been fascinating by the unexplored possibilities offered by the Imperial Navy’s gunboats, but Admiral Percival hadn’t allowed him to try out some of his more interesting ideas. If there was one advantage to being a rebel, he had decided, it was that he could experiment without anyone moaning in his ear about budgets and acceptable expenses.
“I hope that you are right,” Colin said. Even so, he’d decided to give the tactic its first run in a barely-defended system, just in case it wasn’t as workable in practice as theory suggested. “Get in, make your readings and get out again; no heroics.”
“Of course, sir,” Wilhelm said. He made a show of checking his wristcom. “With your permission, sir…?”
“You may board your ship,” Colin said. He’d obtained the old bulk freighter through Daria, but he’d never bothered to give the ship a name. Traditionally, renaming a freighter was left up to the freighter crew; Markus and his wife could argue over the ship’s name. “Good luck.”
“We’ll do our bit,” Wilhelm promised him. “You just be ready and waiting for us.”
The pilot marched out of Colin’s stateroom, leaving him alone and staring at the star chart displayed in front of him. It had been two days since he had decided to launch the raid on Garstang, two days in which he had been making frantic preparations for the mission, along with a thousand other things. Even when he had been working for Admiral Percival, back when Percival had been a mere Commodore, he hadn’t really understood how many responsibilities an Admiral had. The Observation Squadron had been thrown together for a single mission; it hadn’t been a formal fleet. His rebel fleet, whatever else it was, was a formal fleet and had to be treated as such. Colin had too much to do and too little time to do it in.
He studied the series of expanding spheres on the display and frowned. Unless something had gone badly wrong, Admiral Percival would definitely have received his declaration of war by now… and would have had time to alert the nearest systems. There was no way to know for sure, but Colin knew better than to assume the worst. He’d run the calculations based on the least-time approach so beloved of the Imperial Navy and the word would be spreading throughout the sector. It was possible that Admiral Percival would want to conceal the scope of the disaster — reading through the secured files on the superdreadnaught, it was surprising how much had been concealed, even from the Imperial Navy’s personnel — yet Colin doubted he would be that stupid. Percival’s only hope for avoiding disaster — the complete termination of his career, as well as becoming a scapegoat for the mutiny — was to stop Colin before the rebellion got out of hand. He would have to warn the rest of the sector to watch out for his ships.
Colin smiled to himself. Admiral Percival’s only hope of defeating his force was to bring him to battle with an equal or superior force. That was basic tactics; even Percival had mastered those. Yet… where would Colin strike? Given the sheer number of possible targets, Percival had an impossible task ahead of him; he had only two other superdreadnaught squadrons to cover hundreds of possible targets. Colin could keep dancing around him forever or eventually set an ambush of his own. If Percival didn’t ask for help from other sectors, Colin knew, it would be hard for him to stop the rebellion. But then, at the same time, Colin could win battles, but never the war. Sooner or later, he would have to take the fight to Percival’s home base, Camelot itself.
An hour later, they gathered in Colin’s quarters, the same cabins that had once belonged to Stacy Roosevelt. Reasoning that the rebellion needed funds, Colin had torn out the artworks and most of the decorations, handing them over to Daria to sell onwards. Instead, he’d brought in a handful of comfy chairs and a single drinks dispenser; unlike Stacy, he didn’t need an army of servants taking care of him. The servants, Colin had been amused to discover, had volunteered as a body to join the rebellion and had gone into the personnel pool. Without Stacy’s taste in interior design, the quarters were palatial, large enough for Colin to feel as if he were rattling around inside the rooms. They felt so empty.
The admirals, Colin knew, were either so full of themselves that they felt as if they deserved such quarters for their own — even though Colin could have installed an entire company of Marines in the compartments — or kept a mistress in their private living space. Colin couldn’t do either, at least not until the rebellion was underway. He’d just have to endure using the quarters, although he intended to seal off most of the rooms and forget them. A single bed and bathroom was all that he needed. Converting the day room into a meeting room had been easy enough. Percival, of course, would never have allowed those he considered his inferiors into his quarters.
“I’m afraid that she does have a point,” Anderson said, once they had passed through the discussion concerning security and the number of people who had volunteered to join the rebellion. He’d warned that many of them might be Imperial Intelligence agents, something Colin understood, but could do nothing about — at least, not yet. Stacy Roosevelt’s files hadn’t included the names and identities of the spies scattered along the Rim. “What is going to replace the Empire?”
Colin rubbed his forehead. His own carelessness was coming back to bite him, hard. He’d been so focused on gaining control of a sizable fleet — and avoiding the attention of Imperial Intelligence or the Security Division — that he hadn’t given much thought to what was coming afterwards. When he’d thought about it, he’d thought about cleaning up the Imperial Navy, destroying the patronage system and ensuring that talent — not birth and connections — was used as a guide for promotion.
But Hester had been right. After his meeting with her, he’d been approached by representatives from many other groups… and they had all wanted to know what was coming after the Empire. A group of Unreformed Marx — refugees from the Marx Systems, overrun by the Empire centuries ago — had insisted that the Empire become communist, a word Colin had to look up in the secured files. Other visitors had opposed that suggestion quite vigorously, putting forward their own ideas. Colin was starting to understand why the Rim and the millions of outsiders living there hadn’t posed a significant threat to the Empire. They spent their time arguing over what would replace the Empire. The thought made him smile. The mice might have just as well voted to replace the cat with a dog — but that still left the problem of getting rid of the cat.
And, it seemed, the weaker the group — and few of them had any real firepower — the more insistent they were that their views be adopted and heeded. Colin had heard proposals for total freedom — the complete break-up of the Empire, replaced by thousands of independent worlds — to limited reform, or replacing the Empire with another entity that would use the power of the Empire to ensure social reform. The Thousand Families were to be put against the wall and shot, or to be allowed to move peacefully to another world, or even to be allowed to continue as industrial powers. No one seemed to have any coherent plan for the Empire and everyone seemed willing to pick up their toys and go home if their views were not adopted.