“Captain, I’m picking up signals from the orbital asteroids and two of the starships,” Lieutenant Samantha Kennedy said. “I think the cat is definitely out of the bag now.”
“Put them on,” I said.
“This is Sanders, Captain Sanders,” a voice said. It was the sound of despair. “The Marines have taken the ship and are breaking into my cabin. They’re mutinying against…”
The voice vanished, only to be replaced by another one. “There’s a battle going on at the airlocks,” it said. This one was young and female, an Ensign who had forgotten everything, even basic communications protocols. “The Captain is dead! They killed the Captain!”
“Armed Marines are boarding the asteroid and cuffing my men,” someone else said. This one was old and cynical. The Marines had to secure the orbital asteroids before someone got any clever ideas about trying to reassume control of the orbital defences. “They’re killing anyone who tries to resist!”
“This is Devastator,” a familiar voice said. I recognised my former Captain and winced inwardly. I’d wanted the monitor to threaten Earth if necessary, but he would have been one of the few Captains to survive. Devastator hadn’t had a large cell of rebels, just because the Captain inspired loyalty. “I have four mutineers in custody, I repeat, I have four mutineers in custody. I believe that this is not an isolated event and a security alert should be declared at once.”
“Too late,” I hissed, savagely. The quick-reaction force in orbit consisted of the Marines, the Marines I’d already subverted. They wouldn’t respond to orders from the ground, but by the time the UN realised that that was the time, valuable time would be lost. They’d then send up troops in shuttles or the orbital towers, although the latter would be fearfully slow, but by then we’d have control of all the starships, one way or the other. We’d even control the upper levels of the orbital towers.
“We had six people onboard Devastator,” the Senior Chief said. He shouldn’t have been on the bridge at all, but again, no one objected. “Two of them must have been killed in the crossfire.”
“This is Captain Traduce,” another voice said. “I am barricaded in my cabin, but the mutineers have taken control of the bridge and the engineering compartment. The Marines are joining the rebels, I repeat…”
The signal vanished in another wash of static and two more starships declared that they were secure. I keyed my console, sending the orders I’d prepared already, ordering them to prepare to move out to the asteroid belt if necessary. The Marines I’d sent there would have destroyed the UN garrisons by now and the workers would be rebelling, given half a chance. I’d seen it years ago. Earth no longer supplied the UNPF with anything. It all came from the asteroids. Earth’s vaunted industry couldn’t even meet Earth’s needs, let alone anyone else’s requirements.
“Colin, watch out,” someone said. “They’re behind you and…”
It broke off in a scream. “This is UN General Command,” a harsher voice said, yet it was tinged with fear and uncertainty. “This is a general broadcast to all starships. Report your status at once. I repeat, report your status at once.”
“Ignore it,” I ordered, imagining the chaos down on the surface. The politicians would be trying to come to grips with the crisis, unaware that things were already outside their control. I was tempted to broadcast fake information to mislead them, but there was little point. Earth’s power to intervene was almost non-existent. They were probably regretting having disbanded the heavy ground-based laser cannons by now. “Samantha, how many starships are with us now?”
“Twenty-one,” Samantha said. “The Al Gore is drifting out of control and we lost all contact with her two minutes ago.”
“That was one of the ships without subverted Marines,” the Senior Chief muttered in my ear. “If there was a fire fight on the bridge, or damage to the control systems…”
I nodded. “We’ll have to try to recover her later,” I said. The cruiser wasn’t about to fall into the atmosphere and add to Earth’s woes. If worst came to worst, I’d fire on her myself, but it shouldn’t be necessary. The ship wasn’t leaking atmosphere and the crew should be able to remain alive long enough to be rescued, unless they’d killed each other by now. For once, I breathed a silent prayer of thanks for the UN’s obsessive concern with safety. The loyalists would find it hard to pump out the atmosphere and kill my people. “Can you get a link to Trygve Lie?”
Samantha winked at me — she knew my relationship with Kitty — but she opened the link without demur. “Kitty, this is John,” I said, quickly. The battleship was always going to be the hardest target — in fact, in hindsight, I should have tried to prepare a suicide charge for that ship as well. We’d never have been able to smuggle a nuke though the sensors, but there were other ways. “Report!”
Kitty sounded tired when she spoke to me. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” she said. I forgave her the breach of protocol. If she were still alive, we hadn’t failed. Not yet…and the more starships that fell under our control, the more certain our victory. “The good news is that we have control of the ship. The bad news is that there was a laser fight in several compartments and we don’t have any weapons until we can rig bypasses. We don’t even have point defence.”
I swore. Battleship or not, expensive waste of resources or the ultimate weapon of intimidation, the starship was completely defenceless without weapons. A handful of nuclear strikes would take out a battleship, same as any other starship, and while the battleship mounted heavy point defence weapons, they couldn’t use them without the control systems. Intentionally or otherwise, the UN had scored a goal.
“Understood,” I said, finally. There was no point in crying over spilt milk. “Can you still move the ship?”
“Yes,” Kitty said. “The bridge is a mess, but we’ve moved operations down to the CIC and we can still use the drives.”
“Good enough,” I said. “Power up the Jump Drive and jump out to the asteroids. There’s no point in keeping you here if you can’t fight. Make repairs as quickly as you can and then return.”
“Yes, sir,” Kitty said. Her voice softened slightly. “Good luck, John.”
I looked down at the display as the battleship started to manoeuvre out of the planet’s gravity well, ignoring increasingly frantic messages from the ground. We had twenty-one starships under our direct control now, with the others still disputed… apart from Devastator. I’d expected Captain Shalenko to be trying to take action, but instead the monitor was just sitting there, waiting. The torrent of messages from the asteroids was slowing down as my people secured control. He had to be going out of his mind with worry…or perhaps he was waiting to see who came out on top.
They probably think that one of their senior officers has launched a coup, I thought, with a flicker of amusement. The upper levels didn’t realise — they didn’t really believe — that people less fortunate than they had been had minds and souls, or even the ability to use them. The thought of a mutiny from the lower decks was beyond their comprehension and, in every case, their paranoia had worked against them. If every member of the crew on each starship had been armed, the results would have been unpleasant. The chaos would probably have cost us our chance at a bloodless victory.
I looked down at the messages and smiled. They’d been trying to call me directly, but they were also calling others. I wondered if they’d realised that I was in command of the rebellion, but it looked as if they were desperately trying to contact anyone. I studied the relay systems, trying to see what Captain Shalenko was saying to them, but Devastator appeared to be silent. He had to be using tight-beam lasers to communicate with the ground.