And none of it had mattered. The rich had paid vast bribes to be left alone, or had integrated themselves into the developing society. The poor had found that their cities were crumbling away anyway, no matter how much they were told that their lives had improved. And the bureaucrats? They’d discovered that under the system they had created, however accidentally, they had more power than they had ever dreamed possible. Something had to break.
I silently toasted Heinlein with my wine glass. Deborah smiled. She thought I was toasting her.
An hour before we entered the Heinlein System, I ordered the Jacques Delors to yellow alert and inspected every inch of the starship, again. If the UN was ready to tell us that the situation was so bad, the odds were that it was actually much worse. I’d already had drills running throughout the trip, but now I ran through a final set of drills and then ordered everyone to get something to eat. We might be emerging into the midst of a battlefield.
“Wormhole opening, sir,” the Pilot said. Captain Harriman had allowed me to take the helm back when we’d reached Terra Nova, but I couldn’t afford to have an untested Ensign at the helm now. If the Resistance knew what we had come to do, they’d hold nothing back. If they took out Devastator… the UN would have to either send another monitor or alter a missile warhead for use against ground targets. “Emerging… now!”
The display lit up as our sensors started to probe nearby space. Captain Shalenko had picked the wormhole coordinates himself and included them in sealed orders, so it was probably impossible for the Heinlein Resistance to locate us, but they knew — if they knew about us — where we had to go. They could have their remaining starships hiding near the planet. Powered down, they would be barely detectable except at very close range.
“Red Alert,” I ordered. The crew raced to battle stations at once. “Tactical?”
“No enemy starships detected,” Muna said, from her position. Her voice was calm and very composed, but she didn’t know what we had come here to do. “I am picking up a data download from UNS Peacekeeper.”
“Update our records,” I ordered. Peacekeeper was a heavy cruiser of the class before ours. It had been extensively upgraded to continue to serve, but even so, it had weaknesses. I knew that the Resistance had destroyed other ships of the same class. “Communications?”
“I am picking up a direct link from Devastator and George Robertson,” Sally said. I’d placed her on communications, mainly because I needed a trusted officer there. I was relieved to see that she’d gotten along well with Muna, although I knew it had to hurt. Everyone else in our class had made Lieutenant, at least, by now…and Roger was commanding the Kofi Annan. His Admiral Uncle must have pulled more than few strings to set that up. “The Commodore is ordering us to follow him in.”
“Pilot, keep us at medium separation range,” I ordered. There was no real chance of accidentally ramming the monitor, although part of me seriously considered opening fire and hang the consequences. “Tactical, keep watching for enemy starships.”
Heinlein’s orbit looked, if anything, more crowded than it had back when we’d invaded. There were more remote orbital weapons platforms glaring down at the planet, backed up by a handful of starships. I suspected, although there was no way to know for sure, that most of the starships had been recalled to serve in the fleet destined for Williamson’s World, or maybe anti-piracy escorts. The UNPF just wasn’t building enough starships to replace its losses. Even if all the colonies surrendered tomorrow, the UN would still have problems garrisoning them all and rebuilding the interstellar communications network. It didn’t bode well for the future.
I found myself looking at the remains of Heinlein’s orbital shipyards, feeling more than a twinge of envy. If we’d had those working at full capacity, we’d have enough freighters to rebuild the transport network, but the workers wouldn’t work for the UN. Even if Heinlein managed to escape the suffocating clutches of the UN, it would still have to concentrate on building warships, rather than pulling the isolated colonies back together. If the UN fell apart — if we failed — a new interstellar dark age was almost inevitable.
“System Command welcomes us into the system and has cleared us for orbital entry,” Sally said, suddenly. I doubted that System Command was that keen to see us, not if they knew what we had come to do. I felt, again, the insane urge to throw caution to the winds and open fire, but what good would it do? We were within range of those mighty orbital batteries. “They’re asking just what we’re doing here.”
So they don’t know, I thought, coldly. “Ignore it,” I ordered. “If the Commodore wants to explain our presence, he will do so.”
Nothing rose to bar our way as we settled into orbit. I relaxed slightly on the bridge and called up the data download on my console. It was worse than I had realised. Entire tracts of the planet were, to all intents and purposes, completely out of control. Valentine was occupied by the resistance now and any UN Infantry unit that went into of the city never came out again. The orbital weapons platforms were firing every day, and yet… the situation still worsened. The UN had to be out of its collective mind! It had this on its hands and yet it wanted to invade another world?
“The Commodore is informing us to watch for surprises,” Sally said. “The Devastator is about to fire.” She stopped. I could see the question forming in her mind before she pushed it down. “They’re firing.”
I looked up at the display. The monitor had never fired a nuclear planet-bombarding missile while I’d been onboard and I was curious, despite myself. It streaked away from the starship and raced down into the planet’s atmosphere. I watched its trajectory and thought about intercepting it first, but the George Robertson and the orbital weapons platforms would turn on us at once. It reached Valentine and detonated high over the city. The flash would be visible from orbit.
“My God,” Sally said. “Sir, I…”
“As you were, Ensign,” Muna snapped. There was no real anger in her tone. She was as shocked as the rest of us. There was no live feed from the city, but my imagination could fill in the details from the records we’d been shown of the cities on Earth that had died under nuclear attack. Heinlein built good buildings and it was possible that some of them would survive, but the population would be almost wiped out. I wanted to see, to rub my own eyes in what had happened, but there was no point. “Captain…?”
“Leave it,” I growled. I knew that the Heinlein Resistance wasn’t going to let this go unpunished. “Sally, raise the Commodore.”
“He’s already signalling us,” Sally said. “We’re to escort the Devastator to a safe distance from the planet and then cover her as she heads home, before following her ourselves.”
“Understood,” I said, bitterly. When the remainder of the crew heard about this, they’d either be angry, or delighted. Deborah’s speeches had focused on how monstrous Heinlein’s residents were for weeks and I was starting to understand why. If the enemy were to be dehumanised, the UN could do anything they liked to them and the population at home would cheer. “Helm, take us out, following the monitor.”
Nothing happened as we reached the wormhole coordinates and watched Devastator vanish behind a closing event horizon, but I was morbidly certain that thousands of unfriendly eyes were watching us from a safe distance. Intelligence couldn’t even tell us how many starships the Heinlein Resistance had left, but they believed that there were at least five separate starships still active. Four more had been reported destroyed in encounters with the UNPF. If they massed all five together, they might have a chance to take out Devastator before we could stop them.