The Halls of Montezuma

(The Empire’s Corps – Book XVIII)

Christopher G. Nuttall

http://www.chrishanger.net
http://chrishanger.wordpress.com/
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Cover By Tan Ho Sim
https://www.artstation.com/alientan

All Comments Welcome!

Series Listing

Book One: The Empire’s Corps
Book Two: No Worse Enemy
Book Three: When The Bough Breaks
Book Four: Semper Fi
Book Five: The Outcast
Book Six: To The Shores
Book Seven: Reality Check
Book Eight: Retreat Hell
Book Nine: The Thin Blue Line 
Book Ten: Never Surrender
Book Eleven: First To Fight
Book Twelve: They Shall Not Pass
Book Thirteen: Culture Shock
Book Fourteen: Wolf’s Bane
Book Fifteen: Cry Wolf
Book Sixteen: Favour The Bold
Book Seventeen: Knife Edge
Book Eighteen: The Halls of Montezuma

Cover Blurb

An all-new story of The Empire’s Corps!

Earth has fallen.  The Core Worlds have collapsed into chaos.  War is breaking out everywhere as planetary governments declare independence, entire sectors slip out of contact and warlords battle for power.  The remnants of the once-great Empire are tearing themselves apart.  And, in the shadows, the Terran Marine Corps works to save what little they can to preserve civilisation and build a better tomorrow.  But now they might have met their match.

The marines have beaten off a desperate attempt by the corporate worlds to recover Hameau, but the war is very far from over.  The corprats remain powerful, gathering their strength to resume the offensive, locate the marines and impose their society on the ruins of empire.  To stop them, the marines will have to stake everything on a desperate gamble to tear out the heart of the enemy empire and slay the fascist beast in its lair.

But the enemy are equally desperate to win ... 

Prologue I

From: The Dying Days: The Death of the Old Order and the Birth of the New.  Professor Leo Caesius.  Avalon.  206PE.

In hindsight, we should have expected more organised competition.

As we saw in previous volumes, the Terran Marine Corps saw Earthfall coming and took steps to preserve themselves and - hopefully - rebuild the Empire they’d sworn to serve.   Small groups of marines were assigned to isolated worlds at the edge of explored space - including Avalon, a story explored in my earlier volumes - with a mandate to protect and preserve what remnants of civilisation they could.  Others were withdrawn from more populated - and inevitably doomed - worlds to await the final end.  And, when Earthfall finally came - somehow catching us all by surprise despite years of planning and preparations - the corps started liberating and recruiting the trained and experienced workers who would assist the marines to preserve civilisation.

All of this did not take place in a vacuum.  Earthfall led to utter chaos, to wave after wave of destruction sweeping across the Core Worlds.  Planetary governors seized power, only to be consumed by the chaos as uncounted billions were swept out of work and unemployment benefits came to a sudden end.  Imperial Navy officers declared themselves warlords and started building empires of their own, most falling prey to ambitious subordinates or supply shortages within a very short space of time.  Old grudges burst into flame, unleashing a cycle of attacks and revenge responses that ended with entire planetary systems burning to ashes.  We do not know how many people died in the first few months.  It remains beyond calculation.

It was during a recruitment mission, as detailed in the prior volume, that the marines discovered they had a major rival.  The Onge Corporation, previously ruled by Grand Senator Stephen Onge (who died during Earthfall), had established a major base on an isolated world, Hameau.  This alone would be concerning, but further investigation revealed that Hameau was a corporate paradise, a seemingly-ordered world held in stasis by a combination of extreme surveillance and a cold-blooded willingness to remove and terminate troublemakers before they became a serious threat.  It was clear, to the marines, that Hameau represented the future ... as seen by the Onge Family.  The upper classes would have considerable freedom, while the lower classes would be trapped within a social system that would keep them from either rising or rebelling.  If this wasn’t bad enough, the sociologists believed the long-term result would be utterly disastrous.  Hameau would either stagnate to the point it entered a steep decline - not unknown, amongst worlds that refused to permit a degree of social mobility - or eventually be destroyed by a brutal and uncontrollable)uprising.  

The marines therefore decided to intervene.  Landing troops on the surface - the planetary defences were strong enough to keep the starships from securing the high orbitals and demanding surrender - the marines carried out a brilliant campaign that ended with the capture of the capital city, the effective destruction of the planetary government and them being firmly in control.  Everything seemed to have gone their way until the enemy reinforcements arrived, too late to save the world ... but quickly enough, perhaps, to destroy the marines.

There was no hope of negotiation.  The new arrivals rapidly landed troops themselves, trying to destroy the marines on the ground while skirmishing with starships throughout the local system.  The marines, unable to retreat and unwilling to surrender, continued the fight, aided by elements of the local population that didn’t want a return to the days of corporate control (or had compromised themselves to the point they couldn’t hope for mercy from their former allies).  The fighting continued for weeks, with severe effects on the local population and infrastructure, until the marines lured the enemy forces into a trap and smashed them in a single, decisive blow.

However, it was not the end of the war.  How could it be?  The Onge were now aware of the Marine Corps, just as the Corps was aware of the Onge.  With - still - little hope of a peaceful settlement, the two factions girded themselves to continue the war ...

... All too aware that whoever won would determine the fate of the galaxy.

Prologue II

Onge (Inconnu), Shortly After the Invasion of Hameau

“Invasion fleets do not come out of nowhere,” Director Thaddeus Onge said.  He clasped his hands behind his back as he stared out the window overlooking the gardens of paradise itself.  “Where did this one come from?”

He turned, keeping his face carefully blank.  The original reports had been unbelievable.  Hameau had been safe.  Should have been safe.  The only force that could have challenged the planet’s defences was the Imperial Navy; and the Navy was a fracturing ruin, torn apart by admirals and generals who’d declared themselves warlords and set out to snatch as much military power as they could.  Thaddeus had been confident, as the reports continued to flow in from what remained of the Core Worlds, that it was just a matter of time before the last embers of empire faded and died.  There’d be room for a whole new order when the dust settled, he’d been assured.  This time, the right people would be in charge.

His eyes drifted across the table.  The right people hadn’t been in charge for generations.  The Grand Senate had been dominated by a hereditary aristocracy that had lost track of what was important centuries ago.  They’d been too stupid and inbred to know the truth, that he who paid the piper called the tune.  They’d lashed out at giant corporations, all the while sucking up to them for donations.  Bribes, in truth, except they lacked the fundamental trait of the honest politician.  They didn’t stay bought.  Thaddeus’s family had worked its way into the elite for decades, only to discover the empire was already a rotting corpse.  They hadn’t needed long to start planning for the future.

Thaddeus looked at Vice Director Hayden James McManus, Director of Corporate Security.  “I ask again,” he said.  “Where did this invasion fleet come from?”

“The preliminary reports indicate the fleet belongs to the Marine Corps,” McManus said.  He sounded as if he didn’t believe his own words.  “The naval records we obtained suggest the fleet does not exist.”

“Officially, this planet does not exist,” Thaddeus said, waving a hand towards the window and the gardens beyond.  “Not as a corporate headquarters and haven for a new order, certainly.  The marines probably have as much experience as we do in keeping things off the books.”

He sighed, inwardly.  The corporation had spent decades building the planet into a citadel, all the while doing everything in their power to ensure the Grand Senate and the Imperial Navy never had the faintest idea it existed.  The looters would start levying taxes the moment they worked out something was up, he’d been warned.  They couldn’t let the bastards know what was happening until it was too late to object.  They’d known Earthfall was coming ...

... Yet, it had taken them by surprise.

“And they invaded the planet,” Thaddeus said.  “Why?”

“We don’t know,” McManus said.  “But they must have had a sniff of our activities.”

“More than just a sniff, if they’re launching a full-scale planetary invasion,” Vice Director Maryanne Mayan said, sardonically.  “The cost alone must be immense.”

“Yes,” McManus agreed.  He looked at Thaddeus.  “If we predicted Earthfall, sir, they must have predicted it too.  They must have had their own plan to take advantage of the crisis.”

“It isn’t a crisis,” Thaddeus corrected, mildly.  “It’s the new reality.”

He let out a breath.  The corporation had laid its plans carefully, yet they’d been overtaken by the sheer violence of events.  Grand Senator Onge, Thaddeus’s father and mentor, had never made it off Earth.  Rumour insisted he’d tried to seize power, only to be killed by ... by someone, depending who was telling the story.  The Solar System was a burned-out ruin, hundreds of worlds had fallen into civil war or outright anarchy ... the scale of the disaster was beyond human imagination.  Thaddeus knew the plan.  He’d grown up knowing the plan.  He knew he had to collect useful people, bring them to his small cluster of worlds and wait.  He had a nasty feeling the plan had gone spectacularly wrong.

The Corps was always loyal to the Emperor before the Grand Senate, he thought.  The corporation had subverted thousands of army and navy officers, but not a single active-duty marine.  What the hell are they doing?

“Our plan was always to shape the new reality,” Maryanne pointed out.  “Doubtless, the marines have the same idea.”

Thaddeus couldn’t disagree.  There was no hope of putting the empire back together.  The networks of interstellar trade that had once bound thousands of stars into a single entity were smashed beyond repair.  The supply chain was a joke, money was worthless ... outside a handful of worlds that had managed to maintain a certain independence from the empire itself.  The marines weren’t fools.  They wouldn’t have attacked and invaded an entire planet for nothing.  No, they had to have their own plans for the post-empire universe.  Thaddeus wondered, grimly, what those plans might be.  He couldn’t imagine them being compatible with his own.

“There’s no point in disputing the facts,” he said.  His father had delighted in pointing out that the Grand Senate had often disputed the facts, right up until the moment they could dispute them no longer.  “We have to take action.  Fast.  General?”

“I’m already putting together a response,” General Jim Gilbert said.  He was corporate royalty, but he’d served in a dozen engagements in the army before returning to the corporation and, eventually, taking control of its military.  “Many of our ships are on recruitment, but we have a small task force that should be able to drive the marines away from the planet and land troops.  If we get there in time, we should be able to reinforce the defences and crush the invaders.  If not, we can boot the invaders off the planet the hard way.”

“Doing immense damage to the planet’s industry and population,” Vice Director Vincent Adamson said.  The Director of Human Resources didn’t look pleased.  “They’re not going to thank us for turning the entire planet into a battleground.”

“With all due respect, sir, the entire planet is already a battleground,” Gilbert countered, bluntly.  He’d always been plain-spoken, something that had kept him out of the very highest levels.  “We have a choice between retaking the planet, whatever the cost, or abandoning it to the enemy.  And it won’t take them long to realise they’ve merely stumbled on the tip of the iceberg.”

Thaddeus nodded.  Hameau was a major investment, and one they’d worked hard to conceal, but it was hardly the only one.  The marines would find references to Onge in the planetary datafiles ... if, of course, they hadn’t already deduced its existence.  And then ... Thaddeus shook his head.  He couldn’t allow the marines, of all people, to determine the future of the human race.  Their idealism would lead, inevitably, to the wrong people taking power once again, dooming the post-empire universe to yet another series of crashes and disasters.  No, they had to be stopped.  They were committed.  They’d been committed from the moment the marines had first landed on Hameau.

And they don’t know what sort of hornet’s nest they’ve stumbled into, he told himself, firmly.  It was impossible to believe the marines knew the truth, if only because they would have invaded Onge rather than Hameau.  We have a chance to smash them before they recover from the shock.

He looked at Gilbert.  “Are we safe here?”

“It’s impossible to be sure, sir,” Gilbert said.  “But our defences are formidable.  We’ve been bringing newer and better weapons online since Earthfall, when we no longer needed to hide anything from prying eyes.  We’ve also sent out courier boats, recalling the remaining starships from their missions.  And, with your permission, I’ll call out the militia as well.”

“Which will be expensive,” Adamson said.

“And the militia may not be entirely trustworthy,” Maryanne added.

Thaddeus nodded, sourly.  One couldn’t give the common man any power, at least not until he proved himself ... and all political power, at base, came out of the barrel of a gun.  Too many planets had been ruined by politicians who pandered to the masses, or cowered in front of mobs, for him to be sanguine about calling out the militia.   Even if they were trustworthy, even if they could be kept under control, it would be taking experienced men away from their jobs.  The economy would tumble.

“We have no choice,” he said.  Hameau had been intended as a military incubator.  That plan, like so many others, had crashed and burnt in the wake of the invasion.  “We have to move, now, to regain control of events.”

“And quickly,” Gilbert said.  “The Corps trains its people to maintain a high operational tempo at all times.”

Adamson scowled.  “And in plain English ...?”

“They move fast, trying to keep the enemy off balance long enough for them to come out ahead.”  Gilbert smiled, humourlessly.  “We’re the enemy, in case you were wondering.”

“They picked this fight,” Thaddeus said, before an argument could start.  “And we’re going to end it.”

“Yes, sir,” Gilbert said.  “The task force should be ready to depart within the week.”

Thaddeus nodded.  If they were lucky, it was not already too late ...

Chapter One

What went so terribly wrong, when it came to interstellar capitalism and the eventual - inevitable - slide into anarchy?
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

“Aren’t we done with this fucking planet?”

Captain Haydn Steel hid his amusement at the subvocalised comment as he inched his way through the industrial complex, making sure to keep himself out of sight.  The district had been battered by repeated bouts of fighting, from the thunder runs that had put the marines in charge of Haverford to the corprat invasion that had driven the marines back out again and the local insurgency that had torn the city apart until the fighting finally came to an end.  The latest government had, thankfully, managed to evacuate the refugees to a makeshift camp outside the city, in hopes of bringing the district back to life.  Haydn had to give them points for trying, if nothing else.  They were showing more initiative than the average planetary government.

“I thought we were really done,” Rifleman Jeff Culver said.  “What are we doing here?”

“Sniper hunting,” Command Sergeant Mark Mayberry growled.  “Or weren’t you paying attention at the briefing?”

Haydn ignored the byplay as he scanned the surrounding streets and buildings.  An enemy sniper, perhaps more than one, had opened fire on a pair of surveyors an hour ago, killing one and wounding the other.  The marines had been ordered to find the snipers and catch them - or kill them - before the area could be reopened.  Haydn feared, as the marines moved from shadow to shadow, that they’d have to kill the men.  The vast majority of the enemy soldiers had surrendered, when they’d been promised amnesty.  Those who remained active were either loyalists or war criminals.  Or simply convinced they wouldn’t be allowed to surrender.  It wasn’t uncommon for snipers to be killed out of hand.  

Sweat prickled on his forehead as he peered towards the nearest skyscraper.  It looked dangerously unsafe.  A missile or shell or something had crashed through the building without detonating, smashing a chunk of the concrete and probably damaging the frame.  The windows were shattered, pieces of glass littering the ground beneath his feet.  It would be the perfect place for a sniper to hide.  Haydn had seen snipers hit targets over five kilometres away.  The skyscraper would let the bastard shoot right across the river and into the heart of the city.  Haydn feared what would happen if the sniper started taking pot shots at random civilians ...

Most of the poor bastards don’t want to come out of their houses, he thought.  And who can possibly blame them?

He keyed his throatmike, muttering an update to the distant controllers.  There weren’t many marines on the ground, not now.  The former insurgents were trying to maintain order - the new government needed to try to stamp its authority on the planet - but they were neither armed nor trained for crowd control.  It would be a long time, with the best will in the world, before the planet calmed down to the point everyone could relax.  Haydn wished he could call on the rest of the company, if not the entire regiment.  A few thousand marines would be more than enough to flood the entire area and flush out the sniper.

And our snipers are keeping a watch for him, he thought, as he held out his hand to count down the seconds.  They’ll shoot if they catch a glimpse of him.

He cursed under his breath as he slipped out of the shadows and ran across the road.  The marine snipers were good, terrifyingly good - they bragged they could castrate a man with a single shot - but they couldn’t fire unless they had positive identification of the target.  Merely carrying a gun wasn’t enough.  They had to wait until the sniper took aim before they put a bullet in his head.  Haydn understood the political requirements - the local government couldn’t afford to look weak, as if it was allowing the marines to shoot civilians at random - but he wished that whoever had come up with the policy was the one on the front lines.  It was a great deal easier to issue blanket Rules Of Engagement when one wasn’t at risk of being shot.

Glass crunched under his boots as he reached the edge of the lobby and crashed inside, rifle swinging from side to side as he searched for targets.  Nothing moved, not even a mouse.  The signs of looting were all around him.  Paintings had been yanked from walls, drawers pulled out of the receptionist’s desk and dumped on the floor ... their contents stolen and probably sold for scraps.  There were no papers ... Haydn guessed the office had been completely paperless.  Or the papers had been used for fires.  The locals had had a nice city once.  Two successive invasions and an ongoing insurgency had ruined it.

Probably taught them a few bad habits too, he thought, as the rest of the squad joined him.   How long will it be before they start settling disputes with violence?

He put the thought out of his mind as they finished sweeping the ground floor, then sealed the lifts and headed upstairs.  There was no power, not any longer.  There’d been few, if any, independent power generators on the planet, rendering the entire district largely powerless.  A faint smell hung in the air as they reached the first floor and peered inside.  The office looked looted, stripped of everything that wasn’t nailed to the floor.  Haydn felt a flicker of sympathy for the workers as he swept the chamber, noticing how they didn’t have so much as the illusion of privacy.  Or any real control over their lives.  They couldn’t even adjust their desks and chairs.  It struck him as cruel and unusual punishment.  He was in the military and even he knew that complete uniformity was a bad idea.  He’d hate to have to wear BDUs designed for someone smaller than himself.

I suppose it bred good little corprats, he told himself.  The office kitchenette was as bland and boring as the rest of the office.  The powerless freezer stank of rotting food.  He was amused to notice the looters had taken the cleaning supplies, although he knew it wasn’t funny.  Someone could make a pretty good IED, with a little ingenuity.  And it sure as hell would have kept them in their place.

He tensed as he heard something above him.  A footstep?  A bird?  He hadn’t seen many birds in the city, but urban wildlife might well have started making a comeback now large swathes of the city had been effectively abandoned.  Haydn exchanged signals with Mayberry, then inched towards the stairs.  By his assessment, they were going to be moving up to the damaged part of the building.  The skyscraper didn’t feel as though it was going to collapse at any moment, but the shattered walls and damaged interior would make a good sniper nest.  If nothing else, it would be very hard to pick their way upwards without making some noise.

Haydn considered his options as they studied the stairwell, then started to inch up to the next floor.  The air blew colder, carrying with it the unmistakable scent of unwashed human and human waste.  It didn’t smell like a dead body ... Haydn grimaced.  They hadn’t seen many dead bodies since they’d begun their sweep, although he wasn’t sure why.  Perhaps the corprats had collected the corpses and buried them in a mass grave.  It was the sort of thing they would have done, if they’d realised it had to be done.  His lips quirked.  Of course they’d do it.  They’d wanted to bring the city back to life as quickly as possible too.

The sound came again as they reached the top of the stairs.  Rubble lay everywhere, providing all the cover a sniper could possibly want.  Haydn could imagine a skilled sniper setting up a bunch of nests, perhaps even an optical sensor to allow him to track his targets without a spotter ... or revealing himself to prying eyes.  There might even be an automated gun ... the corps didn’t use them, unless they were in a clear war zone, but the corprats might have different ideas.  Who knew?  The sniper probably already considered himself doomed.

He unhooked a stun grenade from his belt, held it up so his team could see what he had in mind, then hurled it through the door and into the exposed zone.  Blue-white light flared.  The grenades weren’t as effective as the media made them look - Haydn wanted a few moments alone with the producers who made those wretched flicks - but anyone caught in the blast would have a few moments of stunned disorientation, at the very least.  He leapt forward, rifle in hand.  The section was deserted.  There was no sign of a sniper or ...

Something moved, above him.  Haydn barely had a moment to notice before another grenade fell from the upper floor.  Haydn shouted a warning and dived for cover, an instant before the grenade exploded.  The floor shook violently.  Haydn breathed a sigh of relief they weren’t in a confined space, then scrambled forward and up the next flight of stairs.  The sniper had to be stopped before he got away.  He heard someone snap off a shot behind him, the bullet cracking through the ceiling.  He couldn’t tell who’d fired, or if they’d hit anything.  Another explosion shook the building a second later.  Haydn felt a flicker of fear.  It was hard to escape the sense the entire building might come tumbling down within seconds.

He crashed into a dark shape.  The sniper bit out a curse as they tumbled to the floor, fists pounding against Haydn’s armour.  Haydn headbutted him, feeling his nose break under the force of the impact.  The sniper had clearly been enhanced, probably illegally.  He almost snorted as the sniper kept hitting him, trying to beat him to death.  The corprats had broken hundreds of laws, just by setting up a colony that was technically off the books.  Why on Earth would they stop breaking laws now?

His fingers found the knife at his belt, drew it and stabbed upwards.  The sniper was wearing body armour too, but it wasn’t designed to cope with knives.  Haydn guessed the sniper’s masters had seen the advantages - the armour was very good at coping with bullets - and chosen to overlook the disadvantages.  The sniper let out a breath as the knife was thrust further into his chest, flailing uselessly as he gasped for breath.  Haydn pushed him over and stared down at him.  The sniper looked ... no different from any of the other soldiers he’d fought and killed in the last few months.

“Lie still,” Haydn said, quietly.  If he could take the sniper alive ... the spooks would have a field day.  The poor bugger was clearly enhanced to the max.  “We can do something ...”

The sniper gurgled, then lay still.  Haydn cursed under his breath as he checked the man’s pulse, just in case he was faking it.  Enhanced or not, a knife to the gut had proven fatal ... it looked as though Haydn had punctured the man’s heart.  A team of medics with modern equipment might have been able to save him, but the closest medics were on the other side of the river.  Haydn pulled out the knife, wiped it with a cloth and returned it to his belt, then started to search the body.  The sniper hadn’t been carrying much.  It looked as though he’d abandoned everything that might have identified him, something else that was technically against the law.  Haydn was mildly surprised the corprats had broken that law.  Terrorists and insurgents did it all the time, but the corprat soldiers were supposed to be better.  They, at least, had superiors who could hold them accountable ... and be held accountable, in turn, for their subordinates.

A shot cracked past.  Haydn darted to one side, seeing another sniper - no, a spotter - standing by the far door.  He cursed and unhooked another grenade from his belt, hurling it towards the enemy soldier.  The soldier dived back, retreating further into the skyscraper.  Haydn called in the contact as he picked himself up and chased the man.  He wanted - he needed - to take this one alive.

“Give up,” he shouted, as he crashed through an open door.  The wooden shape hung off its hinges.  “Give up and we’ll take you alive!”

He jumped into the next room, just in time to see the enemy soldier diving down a garbage chute.  Haydn was tempted to follow him, but it would be a good way to get stuck.  The rest of the corps would never let him forget it.  Instead, he yanked a third stun grenade from his belt and dropped it down the chute.  The sniper might be armoured, but in such close confines it probably didn’t matter.  He heard a curse, followed by a thump.  It dawned on him, a moment too late, that the sniper had probably lost his grip and plunged down.  Hopefully, he’d had enough sense to make sure there was something soft underneath.

“Sergeant, check the rest of the building,” he ordered, as he ran back to the stairs.  The one advantage of a city designed by soulless corprats was that the city was practically uniform.  Learn to navigate around one skyscraper and you’d know how to navigate around all of them.  “I’m going to snatch the prisoner.”

He ran down the stairs and into the basement.  It stunk, a grim reminder that no one had been collecting trash for months.  He could hear someone kicking in the semi-darkness.  The garbage chute opened into a giant metal drum on wheels ... Haydn had a sudden horrified vision of someone getting stuck inside, then being driven to the furnace and incinerated with no one being any the wiser.  He had no idea how the sniper intended to get out.  Perhaps he could tip it over from the inside, with a little effort, or scramble up the outside of the chute.

“Marine Corps,” he shouted.  If the sniper wanted to take a final shot at him, now was the chance.  “Surrender and we’ll get you medical attention.  Resist and you’ll go to the grave.”

He listened, but heard nothing beyond a faint whimpering.  He sneaked up on the drum, grabbed hold and yanked it over.  A torrent of rubbish - and a twitching sniper - fell out and landed on the concrete floor.  The sniper had clearly taken the brunt of the blast and fallen hard, breaking at least one of his legs.  Haydn secured his hands with a plastic tie, then searched him roughly.  Getting the sniper to the medics was going to be a pain, but it could be done.  He had no doubt of it.

“Sir, the building is clear,” Mayberry reported.  “There’s no trace of anyone else.”

Haydn nodded, unsurprised.  If there were more enemy holdouts, they’d have scattered over the city.  They wouldn’t run the risk of being trapped, not as a group.  Haydn wouldn’t hesitate to call down fire from the orbiting starships to smash the enemy, rather than risk the lives of his men trying to root them out and take them alive.  The corprats would certainly assume the worst, if they were smart.  There was no way the city could be brought back to life before the corprats were exterminated.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby,” he said.  “Tell the medics I have a patient for them.”

He searched the enemy sniper quickly, finding nothing.  Again.  The enemy had dumped everything, even his weapons.  Haydn guessed there was a cache of supplies somewhere not too far away.  The corprats hadn’t had much time to prepare for an insurgency - another insurgency - but a skilled junior officer with enough guts to take the lead might just lay the groundwork before it was too late.  And his superiors would probably take a dim view of it.  Corprats disliked people showing even a hint of independent thought ...

And maybe I’m completely wrong, he thought, as he carefully picked up the twitching body and carried it up to the lobby.  Moving a wounded man was dangerous, but the medics wouldn’t come any further into the building.  The corpsmen were just too valuable to be put at risk.  These two might have set off on their own.

“Raptor inbound, sir,” Mayberry reported.  “The medics will be here in a moment.”

“And then we can sweep the rest of the area,” Haydn said.  He cursed under his breath.  They needed the entire regiment, not a single understrength company.  He knew the score as well as anyone - they were short of trained marines - but it was worrying.  They were running the risk of being caught out by superior forces and taking a pounding.  “Any word through the grapevine on reinforcements?”

“Nothing, sir,” Mayberry said.  “There’s a vague report we might be heading back up there.”

“You’d think they could make up their minds,” Culver said, as he joined them.  “Where are we going tomorrow?”

“There’s never a dull day in the corps,” Haydn said.  He grinned.  “The only easy day was yesterday.  Who dares, wins.  And a bunch of other clichés.”

Culver made a face.  “And no hope of shore leave?”

Haydn shrugged.  “I dare say they’ll try and organise something,” he said.  He hadn’t heard anything, but marine officers understood their men needed leave every so often.  Everyone needed time to decompress, preferably in an environment where no one was trying to kill them.  “But I have no idea when or where.”

“There has to be something to do here,” Culver said.  “Hunting.  Fishing.  Shooting ...”

“Yeah,” Haydn said.  He understood the younger man’s feelings.  He just knew they had other problems.  “But our duty comes first.”

Chapter Two

It’s a hard question to answer.  Certainly, a number of theories have been advanced that have their roots in ideology rather than the real world.  
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

“I think we need to make some hard decisions,” Major-General Miguel Foxtrot said.  “To whit, what are we going to do about Onge?”

Major-General Gerald Anderson nodded, curtly, as he sat at the conference table on HMS Havoc and studied the display.  The debriefing notes were all too clear.  They’d severely underestimated the enemy and now ... they were caught in a trap of their own making.  It had been costly enough landing an invasion force on Hameau, an invasion force that had nearly been destroyed by the arrival of enemy reinforcements.  They’d won a series of bloody battles, only to discover they were facing a multi-star corporate polity.  And now they could neither abandon the campaign nor push it to a speedy conclusion.

He kept his face under tight control.  Major-General Miguel Foxtrot was a friend, but ... he hadn’t been there.  Not when it counted.  Foxtrot and his division had arrived too late, after the enemy force had been shattered, the remnants forced to surrender or head for the hills in hopes of hiding out long enough for a second relief force to arrive.  He hadn’t had to grapple with the prospect of being the first marine officer to lose a campaign, a defeat that could have easily led to the end of everything.  Gerald had no illusions.  There were only a handful of new marines in the pipeline and, until they established a new training base, there wouldn’t be any more.  The battle could have shattered the remnants of the corps beyond repair.

“There are three options,” Captain Kerri Stumbaugh said, bluntly.  Her position was a little awkward.  On one hand, she was in command of the ship and the flotilla; on the other, she was an auxiliary and therefore not wholly part of the corps.  “We sit on our asses and do nothing, at least until we have orders from Safehouse.  We send out messengers to Onge and seek a mutual understanding.  Or we find a way to take the war to them before they realise what’s happened and launch another invasion.”

“I know,” Gerald said.  “Do they know what’s happened?”

Kerri frowned.  “We defeated their fleet and retook the high orbitals a week ago,” she said, slowly.  “Assuming they had someone watching the fun from a safe distance, someone who returned home as soon as they realised we’d won, they’ll know what’s happened in a week or so.”

“Assuming nothing happens to that ship in transit,” Foxtrot pointed out.

“It would be unwise to count on it,” Gerald said.  “So ... they’ll know in a week.  What will they do?”

“It depends.”  Kerri looked at her hands.  “We just don’t know enough to make any real guesses.  They may have enough ships to risk launching a second invasion, as you said, or they may pull in their horns and concentrate on home defence ... all the while trying to locate our base.  Right now, our only real advantage is that they don’t know about Safehouse.  That will change.”

“So, we’ve got them off balance,” Foxtrot asserted.

“They know we attacked this world,” Kerri said.  She waved a hand at the bulkhead and the planet beyond.  “They’ll have to assume we might attack their world next.”

Gerald nodded, feeling the weight of the universe resting on his shoulders.  “And where are they?”

Kerri smiled.  “They did manage to destroy a lot of their records before we secured their ships,” she said, “but they didn’t manage to destroy everything.  Sloppy work, if you ask me, even if it would be expensive to put the ships back into working order once their datacores had been destroyed.  We know where they’re located ... or, at least, where the enemy ships were before they came here.”

She tapped a console, bringing up the holographic starchart.  “Inconnu,” she said.  “Officially, at least.  The planet was discovered a few hundred years ago, apparently; settlement rights passed through a network of shell companies and suchlike before the incorporation of the Inconnu Development Corporation.  We cross-checked with records on the surface, such as they are; the IDC is a subsidiary of the Onge Corporation.  The spooks think the Onge took the planet and developed it as a refuge, just like Safehouse.”

Foxtrot shook his head in amused disbelief.  “And none of the beancounters even noticed?”

“There’s a bunch of tax breaks and suchlike to development corporations,” Kerri said.  “Or there were, at least.  As long as no trouble came out of Inconnu, there shouldn’t have been any reason for the beancounters to take an interest.  I suspect the Onge were secretly pulling strings behind the scenes all along, just to make sure no one did take an interest.  The Imperial Revenue Service was underfunded for decades before Earthfall.  I imagine they had plenty of easier and more worthwhile targets to go after.”

Gerald nodded.  He’d been in the corps long enough to know the score.  Development corporations with big budgets had no shortages of friends on Earth.  Getting in on the ground floor of planetary development could be a very solid investment, if one didn’t mind waiting a few decades for it to mature.  It didn’t matter, he reflected sourly, that the colonists themselves were often dirt-poor, even when they weren’t being exploited by their masters.  As long as the developers had the money, they could do whatever they liked.  And the marines often had to clean up the mess.

“So, it’s basically just like Hameau, except on a larger scale,” Gerald said.  “It might be too big a target for us to handle.”

“Quite possibly,” Kerri said.  “The Onge have - had - practically limitless resources.  They owned industrial nodes and shipyards, including a bunch of facilities that built weapons and supplies for the Imperial Navy.  If the defences here were pretty tough, I dread to imagine what they’ll have emplaced to defend their homeworld.  There’s no hope of them feeling the urge to hide now.”

“Yes,” Gerald agreed.  “They can defend themselves openly now.”

He felt his heart sink.  Hameau had been defended beyond the bounds of sanity for any normal colony world.  The Empire had never cared for colonies having the means to defend themselves.  He was still astonished the developers had gotten away with it.  Surely, someone would have noticed.  But it probably wouldn’t have mattered.  The whistleblower would have been bribed or threatened into compliance, if he didn’t wake up one morning to discover he’d been declared a criminal and sentenced to immediate transportation.  The IRS had been so badly riddled with corruption that it was practically a criminal organisation in its own right.  Gerald wouldn’t have been surprised to discover its managers had been subverted long ago ...

And they’re all dead now, he thought, with a flicker of vindictiveness.  The IRS had been blamed for everything, even when it hadn’t been at fault.  The taxmen had always proven convenient scapegoats.  They were blamed for doing their jobs and not doing their jobs.  They all died on Earth.

“We need hard data,” Kerri said.  “And most of the prisoners are unwilling to talk.”

“We could encourage them to talk,” Foxtrot pointed out.

“They surrendered,” Gerald said, sharply.  He had no qualms about forcibly extracting information from terrorists, insurgents and enemy forces that refused to adhere to the laws of war, but the Onge had fought a remarkably clean war.  “We cannot force them to talk.”

“Even when the information in their heads might make the difference between victory and defeat?”  Foxtrot leaned forward, playing devil’s advocate.  “They might know something we need to know.”

“I’d be surprised if they did,” Kerri said, before Gerald could formulate a reply.  “The vast majority of captured crewmen and soldiers knew very little, at least as far as we could tell.  Their superiors didn’t invite them to the briefings.”

“And even if they did, what they know lacks any context,” Gerald said.  The prisoners might talk freely and truthfully, yet unintentionally mislead the interrogators.  “If they talked about Landing City, who knows which Landing City they mean?”

Foxtrot grimaced.  “I’m sure they can fill us in on a few basic details,” he said.  “If nothing else, they can tell us how their society works.”

“We already know how their society works,” Kerri said, sharply.  “No privacy.  No freedom.  A giant nest of worker and soldier and police ants, with strict enforcement and little hope of promotion.  And that’s what they intend to export to the rest of the galaxy.”

“It has to be stopped,” Gerald agreed.  He couldn’t believe the corprats would succeed - the larger the system, the greater the chance of its inconsistencies tearing it apart - but they’d leave a ruined galaxy in its wake.  “And that means we have to act fast.”

“We take the war to them,” Foxtrot said.  “And quickly.”

Gerald studied the display for a long moment.  “How quickly can we get there?”

“It’ll take a few more days to finish reloading the transports,” Kerri said.  “The majority of the newcomers” - she nodded to Foxtrot - “are already on their ships, along with their equipment.  There’ll be a lot of grumbling about the lack of shore leave, but ... too bad.  The squadron itself is ready to go.  However, we will be running the risk of leaving Hameau uncovered.”

“And the Onge have already shown they can land an army relatively quickly,” Gerald agreed, sourly.  The dumpster trick had been brilliant, if one didn’t mind running the risk of being unable to withdraw in a hurry.  He supposed it said something about the corprat mindset.  They’d treated their soldiers as expendable.  “Can they retake the high orbitals?”

“It depends on what they bring to the party,” Kerri said.  “There are gaps in the defences, thanks to us.  We’re tightening up the holes, again, but it won’t be enough if they send an entire fleet.  They were certainly rich and powerful enough to operate an entire squadron of battleships.”

Foxtrot raised an eyebrow.  “Would they?  I always thought the Imperial Navy’s admirals were overcompensating for something.”

Kerri smiled, but it didn’t touch her eyes.  “Back in the old days, the battleships were of purely limited value.  Maybe not quite white elephants, but certainly grey.  There wasn’t a peer power ... there hadn’t been a peer power for centuries.  The battleships were good for intimidation, but anything else they did ... well, smaller ships could have accomplished their tasks just as well.  Cheaper, too.  Those battleships were money sinks.  But now ... I don’t know.  Their plans must assume that, sooner or later, they’d encounter peer powers.”

“And it doesn’t take a battleship to fry an entire planet,” Foxtrot pointed out.  “A handful of c-fractional strikes would be quite enough to do that.”

“If they wanted to kill everyone on Hameau,” Gerald said.  War or no war, the planetary population was one of the best-trained in the galaxy.  They’d already started finding ways to expand beyond the corprat limits.  Given time, Hameau might become a jewel of the new universal order.  “They wouldn’t commit genocide.”

“Desperate men do desperate things,” Foxtrot said.  “Time may not be on our side.”

Gerald considered it for a long cold moment.  The path to hell was paved with good intentions.  Hell, he’d always preferred dealing with power-hungry warlords because they could be relied upon to do what was in their best interests.  An insurgency could find itself going down the path to madness, to mass slaughter and even genocide, before it realised what it was doing.  Desperate times bred desperate measures ... and, with each successive decision, it became easier to do the next.  And the next.  

The Onge aren’t fanatics, he thought.  They’re corprats, with one eye permanently fixed on the bottom line.  They won’t cross the line into genocide.

He shivered.  He hoped he was right.  Corprats often made the mistake of regarding people as interchangeable and disposable tools - Human Resources had much colder implications than Personnel Department - and they might just decide that, if they couldn’t have the trained personnel, no one else could have them either.  Hell, Gerald himself had blown up ammunition dumps and equipment sheds to keep them from falling into enemy hands.  He’d never sentenced millions of people to death, but human history was a liturgy of atrocities that had been considered unthinkable ... at least until someone had not only thought of them, but carried them out.

“We need intelligence,” he said.  “We’ll continue the interrogations, of course, but it is unlikely we’ll get much of anything from the POWs.  We also need to at least try to talk to them ...”

“They may stall long enough to prepare their haymaker,” Foxtrot warned.  “It’s happened before.”

“Yes.”  Gerald took a breath.  He was a veteran of politically-charged negotiations that no one had expected to go anywhere, except the distant politicians who’d been trying to look good in front of their fellows.  The enemy had often used them as a chance to rearm their troops and plot their next move, while the marines had had their hands tied by their political masters.  That, at least, was no longer a concern.  “We agreed we’d send back the POWs if they refused to join us.  They can take a message back to their superiors for us.”

“And we’ll follow in its wake,” Foxtrot said.

“Quite.”  Gerald allowed himself a tight smile.  “We’ll let them keep one of the freighters.  Kerri, you’ll escort her home.  That’ll give you a chance to carry out a tactical survey of the system, before sneaking out and linking up with us outside detection range.  If they refuse to discuss terms, we’ll find a way to take out their orbital defences and land troops.”

“We can take the remainder of the enemy fleet with us,” Kerri said.  “They can launch missiles, if nothing else.”

“Yes,” Gerald said.  “I also want to insert a Pathfinder or two.  We’re going to need more intelligence, particularly things we can’t learn from orbital observations.  Who’s in charge, what are they doing ... that sort of thing.  The higher-ranking prisoners have been able to tell us some details, but not enough.  We may be able to win the war overnight if we can get our hands on the people who can order a surrender.”

“As long as their subordinates don’t have standing orders to ignore orders from captives,” Foxtrot pointed out.  “We do.”

Kerri laughed.  “Have you ever known a corprat who’d agree to issue such orders?”

Gerald had to smile.  Corprats loved being in control.  The idea of diluting their authority, let alone conceding that there might be a time when their authority no longer mattered, was anathema to them.  And while his subordinates had standing orders to ignore anything he might say if the enemy held him at gunpoint, he doubted his opposite number had anything of the sort.  Who knew?  Gerald trusted his subordinates.  He doubted the corprats felt the same way.

“No,” he said.  “But there’s a first time for everything.”

He leaned forward.  “We have orders to finish the war - and quickly,” he said.  “And that means taking the offensive.  At the same time, we may discover that we’ve bitten off more than we can chew.  We will certainly try to talk to them, all the while preparing the first and hopefully final blow.”

“We cannot afford to get bogged down,” Foxtrot agreed.  “We’ll have to take some risks.”

“And learn from our mistakes,” Gerald said.  In hindsight, they’d grown far too used to being the best.  They’d made a whole string of mistakes during the operation, from unspoken assumptions of technical superiority to their training making up for the shortage of numbers.  Gerald hated to admit it, but they’d been luckier than they deserved.  “The post-campaign assessment is going to be a pain in the ass.”

“Let us admit it freely, as a civilised people should,” Foxtrot quoted.  “We have had no end of a lesson, which will do us no end of good.”

“Quite,” Gerald agreed.  “Kerri, prepare your ship and the transport freighter for departure as soon as possible.  Once we finish the interrogations, we’ll transfer the prisoners who want to go home to the freighter and send them off.  There should be enough starship crew to handle the ship.  If not ...”

“We can arrange for our crew to fly her home, then jump ship before the enemy realises we’re there,” Kerri said.  “I’ll arrange it.”

“I have to write an updated report to the Commandant,” Gerald added.  “And then we’ll be getting back to work.”

“No rest for the wicked,” Foxtrot agreed.  “I’ll start drawing up invasion plans immediately.”

“Just remember to credit your staff,” Gerald said, dryly.  “They’re the ones who’ll do all the work.”

He smiled.  Foxtrot would supervise the work, perhaps even sketch out a vague idea, but it was his staff who’d turn the concept into an operational plan.  Not, he supposed, that it would be a very detailed plan.  They simply didn’t know enough about the enemy homeworld.  The files were untrustworthy.  He was all too aware that everything in the databanks, beyond basic planetary details, might have been made up out of whole cloth.

“Yes, sir,” Foxtrot said.  He stood, then paused.  “Can I nominate myself for ground commander?”

Gerald laughed.  “Is it a reward or a punishment?”

Foxtrot pretended to consider it.  “It depends,” he said, finally.  “Which one will get me on the ground?”

“Wait and see what we find,” Kerri advised.  “For all we know, there’ll be no defences and the entire operation will be a walkover.”

“It might,” Gerald agreed.  The corprats could have spent trillions, literally, on securing their homeworld.  They’d had a budget the Imperial Household would envy.  “But I wouldn’t bet money on it.”

Chapter Three

The capitalist, some say, is little better than a robber baron, little better than a feudal lord.  He takes from those who don’t have enough already and hoards it to himself, leaving the poor to starve.  
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

It was, all things considered, the worst place Julia Ganister-Onge had ever been.

She scowled as she sat in the hard metal chair and looked around the chamber.  It was very clearly a prison, even if it was a little more comfortable than she might have expected.  The bed was uncomfortable, the clothes were itchy and the toilet very crude.  She’d asked the guards for her cosmetic supplies, or even for a basic eReader, but they’d said no.  She was a prisoner, and prisoners had no rights.

She’d heard all the horror stories, when she’d first started to work for the family.  Her mother had wanted Julia to put her ambition aside and marry someone from the corporate ranks, someone who would be boring and utterly useless ... someone she’d rapidly grow to loathe.  Her mother hadn’t hesitated to point out the dangers, if Julia fell into enemy hands.  The corporate world had been poisonous well before Earthfall.  Julia might be killed, or enslaved, or raped, or even brainwashed.  It was funny, Julia reflected sourly, that her mother had never talked about the threat of boredom.  She would almost sooner have been put in front of a bulkhead and shot.

Her stomach churned with the bitter bile of failure.  Recruiting Admiral Nelson Agate had been her mission, and she’d been willing to do whatever she had to do to get him onboard, but staying with him had been her choice.  Her gamble.  Admiral Agate had been on the way up and, with her clearing his way and handling the politics, he would continue rising until he was right at the very top.  Or as close to it as an outsider could come.  Julia had had no concerns about developing a relationship with him, about - eventually - becoming his wife and bearing his children.  It was her duty, both to the family and herself.  But now the dream was ashes in her mouth.  She hadn’t seen Admiral Agate since he’d surrendered.  She had no idea what had happened to him.

And it won’t matter, she thought, savagely.  We failed.

She stared down at her hands.  She’d gambled and lost and ... there was no way in hell they’d ever allow her another shot at the golden ring.  The corporation was good at isolating incompetents, at putting them in places they could do no harm.  She was family, so she was fairly sure she’d wouldn’t be thrown out the nearest airlock, but she wouldn’t have a chance to reach the heights again.  There was no room for failure at the very highest levels.  The entire corporation relied upon its leadership being the best it could possibly be.

The blank walls seemed to mock her.  She knew she was being watched, even though she was alone.  She understood, too late, how the starship crewmen must have felt.  She’d been their political commissioner.  She’d controlled the monitors that watched them, every hour of every day.  She’d never abused her power - she hadn’t watched them undressing or making use of the privacy tubes - but ... she doubted they’d feel the same way.  Her skin prickled every time she used the toilet.  She couldn’t even turn out the light.

She stood and paced the compartment.  How long had it been?  She had no idea.  Days?  Weeks?  Months?  Her hair didn’t seem to have grown any longer, but ... she honestly wasn’t sure.  The marines had interrogated her once, asking questions she had no intention of answering, then abandoned her.  She wondered, morbidly, if she’d been forgotten, if they’d put her in a cell and forgotten all about her.  One day, perhaps they’d open the hatch and get a terrible shock.  Or ...

It can’t have been more than a few weeks, a month at most, she thought.  My hair would have grown all the way down to my ass.

She glared at the lights.  They never changed, even when she went to sleep.  No one made her keep a schedule, no one insisted she got in or out of bed ... she was honestly unsure if it had been more than a day or two.  Her head hurt every time she thought about it.  Perhaps she was being drugged.  The automated food dispenser only offered gruel and cold water.  The former tasted like cardboard.  Perhaps it was cardboard.  God knew there’d been all sorts of bids to recycle crap, when she’d been a little girl.  She doubted any of it had been particularly worthwhile in the long run.

Her eyes swept the bulkheads, looking for the monitors even though she knew it was futile.  The monitors she’d used were so small they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye.  The crew would have needed security gear to find them, let alone remove them, gear they - of course - weren’t allowed to have.  She couldn’t find the monitors either, even though she could guess where they were.  She knew where she would have placed them.  Three or four in all the right places would have ensured there was nowhere to hide, nowhere she could do something to escape ... she snorted at the thought.  There were videos and flicks featuring super-strong men and women smashing through hullmetal bulkheads as though they were made of paper.  The real world was rarely that obliging.  And it didn’t come with a laugh track, either.

The hatch hissed.  Julia turned and straightened, trying to pretend she was in her office as the hatch opened completely.  She considered trying to jump the interrogator, but what was the point?  There was nowhere to go.  And besides, she had no real combat training.  She leaned back as the marine walked into the cell, her eyes narrowing as she took in the sight.  The marine was a mousy woman, with long hair and a uniform so shapeless she looked as though she was trying to hide herself.  Julia felt a flicker of contempt, then concern.  The marine was almost certainly trying to look harmless.  And that meant ... what?

“Good morning,” she said.  Her voice felt rusty ... how long had it been, really, since she’d spoken a single word?  A week?  A month?  A year?  “Welcome to my humble abode.”

The marine smiled, rather wanly, then turned and walked towards the table.  Julia’s eyes followed her, silently noting that her arms were rather more muscular than one might expect from such a mousy woman.  It was an act, no different to the act she’d been taught to put on when she was a teenager.  Fake it until you make it was pretty good advice ... she wondered, sourly, why a marine would need the act.  Perhaps she wanted to be underestimated.  Julia doubted it was working.  She was acting like a servant in a great house, not a prison interrogator.  Surely, she’d know it was hard to feel superior when one was in a goldfish bowl ...

Just like everyone else, Julia thought, bitterly.

“Please, sit,” the marine said.  Her hair spilled over her face, nearly hiding her eyes.  “We have much to discuss.”

Julia sat, crossing her arms under her breasts.  “Do I have a choice?”

“You can stay here, if you like,” the marine said.  “Or there are other places you can go.”

“I suppose.”  Julia frowned at her interrogator.  “Do you have a name?”

“Rachel,” the interrogator said.  “And you’re ...”

“Julia,” Julia said.  She was too tired to keep the sneer out of her voice.  “As I’m pretty sure you already know, given that I gave my name to the last interrogator.”

“Quite.”  Rachel looked forward.  “Tell me about Inconnu.”

We call it Onge, Julia thought.  She tried to jolt her sluggish brain into high gear.  If the marines had name-checked Inconnu ... it meant they knew where the corporation was based.  Or did they?  They would hardly have needed to ask her if they already knew everything.  How much do they actually know?

Her mind raced.  She could lie to them, except ... she had no idea how they’d react if they caught her in a lie.  All the horror stories suddenly seemed very real.  In hindsight, she should have gone for one of those courses on resisting interrogation.  Should she tell the truth?  Should she lie?  Should she say as little as possible and hope they didn’t have ways of making her talk?  She was supposed to be immune to truth drugs, but it had never actually been tested.  And she knew she had little tolerance for pain.

“It’s a resort world for the corporate elite,” she said, finally.  It was true, if one left out practically everything.  “I grew up there.”

Rachel seemed unsurprised.  Julia wondered, not for the first time, if Admiral Agate or one of his subordinates had started talking.  She didn’t have much to look forward to, if - when - she got back home, but they had even less.  She’d have turned her lover - her former lover - into the scapegoat, if she hadn’t known she was too far beyond salvation.  She couldn’t hope to escape the consequences of her failure.  

“You must have had an interesting life,” Rachel said.  “What was your childhood like?”

“Boring,” Julia said.  She knew, intellectually, she’d been lucky ... but she had a hard time believing it.  She was minor corporate royalty and yet she’d grown up in a world of staggering luxury.  The idea of growing up in a ghetto, scavenging and perhaps even selling herself for food, was utterly alien to her.  “It was safe and warm and boring.”

“I see.”  Rachel’s eyes crinkled, just slightly.  “Tell me about your world.”

Julia considered refusing, but she couldn’t see how the information would help the marines.  She talked about her childhood, about her teenage years, about her decision to make her bid for the golden ring ... Rachel listened quietly, sometimes asking questions to bring out more detail.  Julia wondered, suddenly, if she was saying more than she should.  She’d told the marines a great deal about how Onge actually worked.

But it won’t help them, she thought.  All I’ve done is told them who’s in charge.

“That’s very interesting,” Rachel said, when she’d finished.  “We have a question for you.”

She leaned forward.  “We promised you that we’d repatriate all POWs as soon as possible, if they wanted to return home.  Do you want to return?”

Julia frowned.  She’d never really expected the promise to be kept.  “And if I say yes, what’ll happen?”

“You’ll be transferred to a freighter and shipped home,” Rachel told her.  “Whatever happens after that is in the hands of your government.”

“And only a few hundred of us want to go home?”  Julia wasn’t sure she believed that, but if the marines were only letting one freighter go ... the total couldn’t be much more than five hundred.  “Can I talk to them?”

“No.”  Rachel shrugged.  “Not now, anyway.”

Traitors, Julia thought.  There were hundreds of thousands of spacers and soldiers attached to the fleet ...

Her blood ran cold.  God!  How many had died in the last few weeks?  The marines had practically drowned an entire army!  Thousands ... tens of thousands ... she didn’t want to think about it.  Her stomach clenched at the thought.  There might only be a few thousand survivors, if that.  Some of the people who wanted to go home might not have come with the fleet, but instead ... they might be surviving members of the planetary government.  She wondered what sort of reception they feared, or deserved.  No one had expected an invasion.  But they hadn’t done a good job of fighting it off, either.

She put the thought to one side and leaned forward.  “Does Nelson want to go home?”

“Nelson?”  Rachel paused for a moment, as if she was considering her next words very carefully.  “Admiral Agate?  I believe he wants to stay.”

Julia gritted her teeth as the stab of betrayal ran through her.  It was hard to blame the admiral, not when he’d be busted all the way down to ... whatever was below midshipman, even if they had to make up a new rank just for him.  And yet, she had spent enough time with him to like and respect him as more than just a meal ticket.  She was tempted to ask if he wanted her to stay with him, but she didn’t have the guts.  In truth, she was scared of the answer.

She looked down at the metal table, her thoughts whirling through her mind.  Her duty was to the family, to the corporation they’d created and the new galactic order they intended to build.  And yet, what fate awaited her when she got home?  Death?  Exile?  Permanent inconsequence?  Or what?

And if I stay, she asked herself, what can I expect?

She had no idea.  Again, she didn’t want to ask.  It was possible the planetary government - the new government - would insist she be put on trial, even though they’d surrendered on terms.  It was also possible it wouldn’t do anything for her.  She might be assigned to a settlement and told to work or starve.  Or ... she didn’t know.  She just knew she didn’t want to face it.  She ...

Someone has to warn the family of what’s coming, she thought.  She thought they’d listen to her.  She’d been at Admiral Agate’s side, watching as he and General Rask had directed their forces against the enemy.  They should have won.  They ... someone had to explain what had happened, rather than leaving the head honchos in the dark.  Who knew?  Perhaps it would buy her something more than permanent irrelevance.  If they listen to me ...

“I want to go home,” she said.  She wanted to keep her voice calm, but she knew she’d revealed too much of her desperation.  She wanted out of the cell.  She wanted to go home.  She wanted the universe to start making sense again.  “When do we leave?”

Rachel smiled.  “Two days,” she said.  “You’ll be transferred tomorrow and held within the freighter until she departs.  I hope that’s satisfactory?”

Julia shivered.  She hadn’t expected things to move so quickly.  The marines were efficient.  All of a sudden, Admiral Agate’s tales seemed very reasonable.  She swallowed, hard, and cleared her throat.

“What choice do I have?”

“You can stay, if you like,” Rachel said.  “The planet below needs settlers.  They’ll be quite happy to have you, if you’re prepared to work.  There’s a whole bunch of starship crewmen with skills the planet desperately needs.  They’re looking at high salaries and the chance to build a whole new life.  Even the ones without skills have a chance to better themselves.  Their children will have a chance at a good life.”

“Really.”  Julia felt another surge of bitterness.  The universe had had a place for her, before the fleet had been defeated.  Now ... she couldn’t hope for much.  “And do you think I have skills that are desperately needed?”

“You might be surprised,” Rachel said.  Her face was so expressionless Julia knew it was an act.  The woman was laughing at her behind her mask.  “You clearly have some skills.”

Seduction and manipulation, Julia thought.  She doubted either skill would be useful on the planetary surface.  She’d gotten away with a lot, in the past, because of the family name.  Here ... she supposed the best she could hope for wasn’t very good at all.  I’m no good with my hands.

“Not enough,” she said.  What could she be?  A whore?  A high-class courtesan?  She wondered, suddenly, if there was any difference between what she’d done for the family and outright prostitution?  Perhaps there was ... it had been for a cause, not for something as tawdry as money.  “I’d like to go home.”

“As you wish,” Rachel said.  “I do have a few more questions ...”

Julia groaned, inwardly, as Rachel started firing more questions at her.  She’d made the mistake of talking and now ... she couldn’t stop talking.  The unspoken threat of not being allowed to go home after all haunted her mind, keeping her under firm control.  Thankfully, there were a lot of things she simply didn’t know.  She knew very little about the planetary defences, or about the remainder of the navy.  She grimaced, inwardly, as she realised Admiral Agate probably knew a great deal more.  There was no point in trying to lie.  She wasn’t even sure she could mislead them ...

She rubbed her forehead, feeling a headache starting to throb beneath her temples.  Perhaps they’d dosed her with something, or perhaps ... it didn’t matter.  All that mattered was that she’d told them too much and yet, not enough.  She didn’t know enough.

“I need a rest,” she mumbled.  She didn’t expect to get anywhere, but she wanted to ask anyway.  Her brain felt as if it was going to explode.  She wanted to bury herself below the thin blankets in hopes of getting as little light as possible.  “Can I get a nap before I get shipped home?”

Rachel stood, brushing down her baggy uniform.  “If you wish,” she said.  She held out a hand.  Julia shook it automatically.  “And if you want to change your mind, you can do so at any moment before transfer.  After that ... good luck.”

She walked to the hatch.  Julia watched her go, fighting the temptation to ask if there was something she could do on the planet.  Something ... she shook her head.  She had to go home.  She had to report, even if it meant condemning her career to the dustbin of history.  She had to tell the family what was coming ...

And Nelson is staying here, she thought.  He’ll tell them everything he knows.

Chapter Four

The flaw in this argument is that it assumes that ‘wealth’ is a fixed amount.  A pie, in effect.  One can take all the pie and leave everyone else with none.  But this isn’t true of capitalism.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

“I must say, that baggy outfit and terrible wig makes you look ravishing,” Specialist Steven Phelps said.  “Will you keep the trousers on for me?”

Specialist Rachel Green gave him the finger as she straightened up, brushing down her oversized uniform.  She’d dressed down for the interrogation, in hopes of weakening Julia Ganister-Onge’s mental defences, but it was hard to tell if it had had any real effect.  The poor woman hadn’t been remotely trained for captivity, let alone forced to run through the dreaded Conduct After Capture course.  Julia was pretty close to breaking, if indeed she hadn’t broken over the last week.  The cell was designed to disorient anyone unlucky enough to find themselves inside it.

“I think you need your eyes checked,” she said.  “You’re going blind.”

“I’ll have you know I bribed a doctor to give me a clean bill of health,” Phelps teased her.  “And all it cost me was turning up in perfect health.”

“Then you’re in to a very weird scene,” Rachel said.  “I always knew you were a terrible pervert.”

“You wound me,” Phelps said.  “There’s nothing wrong with being into girls in baggy outfits ...”

Rachel rolled her eyes as she removed the wig and placed it in a locker, then headed into the washroom to change into her regular uniform.  Pathfinders didn’t have to wear formal uniforms, as long as they weren’t on parade, but she didn’t see any need to wear civilian clothes while she was onboard ship.  Besides, there were just too many real civilians onboard.  The last thing she wanted was to be mistaken for one of them.  Her teammates would never let her forget it.

She stripped down and inspected herself in the mirror, then pulled her BDUs on and walked back out.  The scars from the previous engagement had healed nicely, although the medics had warned her to take it easy for a few days.  Rachel was fairly sure they were joking.  She wasn’t really capable of taking things easy.  Besides, there was always something for the Pathfinders to do.  Rumour had it they were going to be redeployed any day now, although no two rumours agreed on when and where.  Rachel had a private bet with herself that they were going to be inserted on another corprat world.  The spooks had insisted on asking questions to get the lay of the land - the lie of the land, they’d joked - and that could only mean one thing,

“I’m ready,” she said.  “And if you say anything about my uniform ...”

Phelps held his hands up in surrender, then fell into step beside her as they left the interrogation cube and made their way through the giant ship.  The Marine Expeditionary Unit was buzzing with life, from marines running rings around the main corridors to auxiliaries and crewmen stowing gear as they prepared the starship for departure.  She felt a handful of eyes watching them as they walked onwards, admiring eyes.  Pathfinders were the best of the best, the most capable Special Forces unit in history.  Everyone wanted to join them.

She smiled.  She’d heard all sorts of rumours about other units, about SF groups so black that no one below the commandant himself knew they existed.  The Green Lights, the Marine Corpse ... she had no idea if they were jokes, or distractions, or real.  It was quite possible she’d never know.  The elites would invite her to join, if they wanted her, but otherwise ... she shrugged.  Secrets were secrets for a reason.  She was trained and enhanced to keep her from being interrogated, yet ... who knew?  Anyone could be broken if the interrogator tried hard enough.  What she didn’t know, she couldn’t tell.

The remainder of the team, Specialist Michael Bonkowski and Specialist Tony Perkins met them outside Officer Country.  Rachel wasn’t sure she liked that designation, not on a starship built for the corps and crewed by marines.  The idea of a whole separate section for officers felt like blasphemy, when the officers were supposed to share the perils of the men they commanded in battle.  Rachel had met quite enough army officers who didn’t to know how important it truly was.  And yet ... Officer Country was more than just Major-General Anderson’s office.  It was the home of the planners and beancounters who made the deployment work.

It helps they’re on detached duty, she thought, as they stepped through the hatch.  They know what’s important.  They simply haven’t had time to lose track of it yet.

The office hatch was open.  They were expected.  Rachel smiled as they filed in, feeling like she’d been summoned before the headmaster to explain herself.  Again.  She wondered, idly, how the junior marines thought when they saw the elite go directly into the Major-General’s office.  Envy?  Or pity?  The junior marines had captains and lieutenants and even sergeants between themselves and their ultimate superior.  It would be years before the riflemen qualified to join the elite themselves.

If they ever do, she thought, grimly.  The Slaughterhouse is gone.

She straightened to attention as Bonkowski took the lead.  “Pathfinders reporting for duty, sir.”

“Good.”  Major-General Anderson looked harassed, for someone who’d just won one of the most shattering victories in modern history.  The marine corps had met its first real test in decades and won.  “We have another mission for you.”

Rachel nodded, shortly.  She assumed the team hadn’t been summoned to discuss the weather.  There might be some grumbling about shore leave, or lack thereof, but they knew their duty.  She’d rest when she was dead.  Besides, unless they were wanted back on the planet, there’d be some time to rest before they reached their next destination.  She didn’t bother to speculate.  She’d get the details shortly.

“We’re going to be sending the prisoners back in two days, as you know,” Anderson said, adjusting the holographic display.  “What you don’t know is that you’re going to be going back with them.”

“Cool,” Phelps said.

“Quite,” Anderson said, as Bonkowski shot Phelps a sharp look.  “Your orders are to insert yourself into their society and be ready to assist, if - when - the invasion fleet arrives.  I can’t give you any more precise instructions, because I don’t know what you’ll find when you get there, but ideally you’d avoid anything that might reveal your presence before it’s too late.”

“Yes, sir,” Bonkowski said.

Rachel had a different thought.  “Do you expect to insert us with the POWs?”

“If you believe that’s the best way to do it, then yes,” Anderson said.  “However, I would be very surprised if they didn’t take the POWs into custody the moment they returned home.”

“And getting to the planet without getting detected might be impossible,” Bonkowski said, thoughtfully.  “Even if they don’t know what they did here, they’re bound to have newer and better sensor nets covering their homeworld.”

Rachel nodded.  She’d handled some of the interrogations herself and monitored the others.  The POWs hadn’t known much, but the ones who’d been born on Onge - as they called their world - had been a wealth of information.  They’d told Rachel how their society worked, how everyone was listed in a database ... a database most of them considered to be holy writ.  The weak point was obvious.  If they could get onto the database, they could move around freely.  Anyone who questioned them would be told they had authorisation ...

So all we have to do is get on the database, she thought.  It wouldn’t be the first time she’d sneaked into an enemy-controlled system, either by forging the right documents or simply taking someone’s place.  It shouldn’t be too hard.

“We’ll hitch a ride on the freighter,” Bonkowski said, firmly.  “And jump ship before it gets boarded and searched.”

“You have complete freedom,” Anderson said.  “Just make sure you’re in position to be useful when the time comes.”

“Yes, sir,” Bonkowski said.  “We won’t let you down.”

Rachel smiled as they saluted, then left the compartment and headed to their private section to hash the operation out properly.  The chance to devise their own operational plan, to call on whatever stores and personnel they needed to make it work ... heaven.  Assuming, of course, they survived.  She was too experienced to believe that everything would go perfectly.  Midway through the operation, they might find themselves having to improvise ... her imagination provided too many possibilities.  She’d faced religious nuts who’d believed that anyone held prisoner had been defiled and could no longer be trusted.  They’d gunned down their own people rather than take them back.  

The corprats won’t do that, she thought.  If nothing else, they’ll need to know what happened to their fleet.

She frowned.  It was one hell of a gamble, although - from what she’d heard - standard naval doctrine insisted that a fleet should be accompanied by a picket ship just to keep an eye on things from a safe distance.  There was a good chance the bad guys already knew what had happened.  They had to know there was no point in killing the former POWs.  And ... if nothing else, the returned POWs should be one hell of a distraction.  It would keep them looking in the wrong direction.

“So, we have our orders,” Bonkowski said.  He was, technically, the team lead.  They were all experienced enough to have few qualms about putting the plan together as a group, then following orders when they went into the fire.  They’d all proved themselves long ago.  “Get to the planet, blend in and wait.”

“Sounds very simplistic,” Phelps offered.  “Should we try to seduce the head honcho while we’re at it?”

“You’re not allowed to watch those dumb spy comedies anymore,” Bonkowski said, curtly.  “Go get a sex life instead.”

“They’re not comedies,” Phelps insisted.  “They’re what some overpaid hack thinks a spy genuinely does for a living.”

“And, according to those hacks, we’re all ultra-violent drooling morons who chant like football fans when we’re on the battlefield,” Rachel pointed out.  “I don’t think their opinions can be taken seriously.”

“And they’re probably dead,” Perkins offered.  “There’s room for some real stories now.”

Phelps snorted.  “They did a story about an army garrison on some shithole world once,” he said.  “It was very realistic.  The grunts spent most of their time standing guard and sitting about doing nothing, while cramming ration bars into their mouths.  It was so boring it never got so much as a second episode.”

“You can write something better, when you’re older,” Bonkowski said.  He keyed the holographic projector.  “The official files say the planet has nothing more than a handful of outdated Orbital Weapons Platforms.  Anyone want to bet that’s true?”

“Not a hope in hell,” Rachel said.  She was used to gambling, but she disliked the idea of being on the wrong side of a sucker bet.  “I thought we’d taken the enemy admiral prisoner.”

“We did,” Bonkowski confirmed.  “And he’s been spilling his guts.  Problem is, he doesn’t know very much about the planetary defences.  Lots of shit was compartmentalised, apparently.”

“Wise of them,” Phelps commented, sardonically.

Bonkowski nodded.  “Frankly, they’re either trying to mislead us deliberately or they know so little they’re misleading us by accident.  There’s a pair of orbital elevators and suchlike, and a whole bunch of stations in orbit, but none of the POWs can say what they are.  Not with any great certainty, at least.  The chances are good some of them are industrial nodes and others are weapons platforms, but they don’t know which is which.  We might not know until the weapons platforms start shooting.”

“There’ll probably be less debris in orbit too,” Rachel commented.  “An orbital drop is unlikely to work.”

“We’ll be dead before we know we’re under attack,” Perkins agreed.  “But we can probably get onto the orbital stations, with a little effort.”

“Yes.”  Bonkowski tapped the display, bringing up an image of the captured freighter.  “We can’t insert ourselves into the prisoner compartments.  The ship itself will be flown by the POWs, which means that joining the crew isn’t a possibility either.  We’ll be riding on the outside until the ship reaches its destination, then jumping off and making our way to the enemy stations.  At that point, we’ll have to wing it.”

Rachel nodded.  Getting into the station wouldn’t be difficult.  The Empire had standardised everything centuries ago, including airlocks.  They could open an airlock from the outside and get into the station, although - unless they were very careful - there was a good chance they’d set off the alarms.  The corprats probably wouldn’t seal their airlocks.  They wouldn’t want to take the risk of trapping someone outside when they were running short of air.

Accidents happen, particularly when someone makes them happen, she thought.  She had plenty of experience in arranging them herself.  And the station is probably large enough for us to sneak around without being detected.

She frowned.  “Do we have copies of the enemy personnel files?”

“Not enough,” Bonkowski said.  “We have copies of the files for this world, but not for Onge itself.  And we’d better get used to calling it Onge too.”

Rachel nodded.  “Best case, we replace a bunch of people long enough to make their lives miserable,” she said.  “Worst case, we hide in the ducts until the time comes and then make their lives miserable.”

“Worst case, we get caught and shot,” Phelps pointed out.  “Anyone got any famous last words?”

Perkins smiled.  “I told you I was ill!”

“Back to work,” Bonkowski said.  “We have an operation to plan.”

“Sir,” Phelps said.

***

It had been years, Captain Kerri Stumbaugh thought sourly, since she’d set foot on an Imperial Navy battlecruiser.  The design had always annoyed her, speaking more to the Imperial Navy’s desire for big and spectacular starships rather than workhorses that could actually do the work.  They didn’t even have the firepower of the battleships, although - she acknowledged - this ship had battered her squadron badly before she’d been forced to surrender.  Cruisers could do everything battlecruisers could do and cheaper, much cheaper.  One could buy and operate ten cruisers for the cost of one battlecruiser.  The corps certainly had.

Although the navy’s finances were a mess before the end finally came, she reminded herself, dryly.  Between corrupt officers and a shitty procurement system, they probably spent more on screwdrivers than they did on this ship. 

She walked onto the bridge and looked around with interest.  The Onge Navy didn’t seem to have made many improvements, although what they had done had been disconcertingly good.  The battlecruiser’s sensors were better than she’d thought, the missiles top-of-the-range ... it was lucky, she supposed, that she’d had an ace up her sleeve.  Their first real engagement between capital ships could easily have gone the other way.  The Onge had trained their crews very well.  She made a mental note to learn from the battle.  It could have ended very badly indeed.

“Captain.”  Chief Engineer George Daniels stood from behind a battered console.  He looked as if he’d been working constantly for the past few days, without so much as a shower or bed.  “Or is it Commodore here?  I can never tell.”

“Either.”  Kerri shrugged.  She’d met Imperial Navy officers who’d throw a fit if they weren’t addressed by their proper rank, but she’d never been that concerned.  She was in the corps, not the navy.  Besides, she wasn’t on her ship.  “Can we get her to move?”

“Barely.”  Daniels shrugged as he wiped his hands on his uniform trousers.  “There’s not that much damage to her hull, Captain, but they damaged the datacores beyond easy repair.  I’d say take her to a shipyard, if we had the time.  We’ve done a lot of jury-rigged crap to get her moving again, but she won’t have anything like the flexibility she should have.  The rest of the squadron is not that much better off.”

“I see.”  Kerri frowned.  The battlecruiser was little more than a sitting duck if her systems couldn’t interact.  Her hull was tough, but not that tough.  “How much can you do with automation?”

“Very little,” Daniels said.  He removed a datapad from his belt and held it out to her.  “The datanet is shot to hell.  There’s a bunch of systems that survived more or less intact, but can’t talk to each other.  My crews can rig up a wireless system to make it work, but a couple of solid hits will knock it down again.  Like I said, she needs a shipyard.”

“Which isn’t likely to happen, not any longer,” Kerri said.  The corps had small shipyards and mobile repair ships, but they weren’t big enough to handle a battlecruiser.  The giant shipyards that had supplied the Imperial Navy had been dying for years, before the crunch finally came.  “Can she make a voyage through phase space?”

“Yes, as long as you’re careful,” Daniels said.  “But I wouldn’t try anything risky with her unless I wanted to die.”

“Got it.”  Kerri smiled.  She’d had an idea.  It was crazy, the sort of idea that would get someone marched in front of a court martial in the old days, but it might just work.  “Get as much done as possible, then ask for volunteers from your crew to sail her.”

“Aye, Captain,” Daniels said.  He sounded as if he didn’t believe his ears.  “If you take her into harm’s way ... I don’t think she’ll come back.”

“I know,” Kerri said.  She reached out and touched the battered command chair.  “As long as she does what we want, she’ll be fine.”

Chapter Five

Imagine three people: a lumberjack, a carpenter and a builder.  They may see themselves as independent, as separate people, but in truth they are part of a chain that leads from relative poverty to wealth.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

Julia awoke, sharply, as the hatch hissed open.

She’d been asleep ... she wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep.  Her eyes felt leaden, as if she’d stayed awake for days - helped by mil-grade coffee and stimulants - and only just fallen asleep when the hatch opened.  She wondered, as she blinked tiredness from her eyes, if she’d been drugged.  It would be almost laughably easy.  They controlled her entire environment.  Doping the water or ration bars - or even piping gas into the compartment - would be simple.  She forced herself to sit up and look at the hatch.  A lone man was standing there.

Julia scowled.  He wore a suit of featureless armour, covering him from head to toe.  It was impossible to see a face behind the helm, impossible to know who was intruding on her privacy.  Julia felt her expression harden, knowing - even though she didn’t know how she knew - that she was being scrutinised.  The armour was intimidating and the grim certainty she could never point out the man in a crowd was worse ... Corporate Security used the same trick, she’d been told.  It was impossible to punish a man if you didn’t know who he was.

“On your feet,” the marine ordered.  The voice was completely atonal.  “Come with me.”

Julia stood on wobbly legs.  “Shouldn’t I be cuffed and shackled for this?”

The marine showed no visible reaction.  “Do you want to be?”

“No,” Julia said, after a moment.  They didn’t need to bother.  She was helpless, lost and completely alone.  “There’s no point.”

The marine beckoned her to follow as he turned and walked through the hatch.  Julia sighed and did as she was told, passing from one metal compartment to another.  The air smelled of too many people in too close a proximity, but there was no one in view save for her and her captor.  The skin on the back of her neck prickled as they walked on.  They were being watched by unseen eyes.  Julia gritted her teeth, feeling the sensation grow stronger.  She felt as if she was walking to her execution.

They said I could go home, she thought, as they passed through another pair of airlocks.  They said ...

The gravity field shifted, slightly.  She stumbled, nearly falling to the deck.  The marine put out a hand to steady her, Julia leaned on his arm gratefully.  The armour felt cold and hard.  Admiral Agate had said something about it, once ... she couldn’t remember.  Not, she supposed, that it mattered.  She wasn’t a trained marine, let alone a superhero from an action flick.  There was no hope of kneeing her captor in the groin and fleeing.  She literally had nowhere to go.

Another airlock opened.  A gust of air washed across her nostrils.  She grimaced.  The air smelled of oil and sweat, a stench that nagged at her mind.  The marine didn’t slow as they walked down a long tube and through yet another airlock.  The deck started to thrum beneath her feet.  It dawned on her, too late, that they’d moved from starship to starship.  The marines had docked another ship to theirs and marched her over ...

A young man, wearing a simple shipsuit, waited for them.  “Commissioner Onge?”

“Ganister-Onge,” Julia corrected, waspishly.  She wasn’t about to allow her family name to be mangled.  The intermingling of bloodlines was vitally important to ensure the family remained healthy, escaping the curse of inbreeding and hereditary illness.  “What can I do for you?”

“I’ll take her from here,” the young man said.  “Thank you.”

The marine nodded, turned and withdrew.  Julia glanced back in time to see him pass through an airlock and, presumably, back onto the mothership.  The hatch closed ... she wondered, idly, if the marine had looked back at her before it was too late.  Not that it mattered, she supposed.  They’d never see each other again.

“We have prepared a cabin for you,” the young man said.  “If you’ll come with me ...?”

Julia gave him a sharp look.  “Who’s we?”

“Those of us who want to go home,” the young man said.  “If you’ll come with me ...”

Julia hesitated, then allowed him to escort her through a warren of metal corridors.  The ship - one of the troop transports, she guessed - was heaving with people.  They passed a dozen compartments crammed to bursting with former naval and army personnel, men and women trying desperately to find somewhere comfortable to sit and wait for departure.  The transport hadn’t even left orbit and there was already friction, she noted; she shuddered at the thought of what conditions would be like in the next few days.  Even if they flew at their best possible speed, it would be at least a week before they reached Onge.  The decks might turn into warzones.  It was not going to be a pleasant flight.

They could at least have offered us security, she thought, numbly.  It would've made the trip so much more bearable.

A hatch opened.  She peered into a tiny compartment, barely large enough for a single adult ... she couldn’t help thinking it had been intended for a child.  The bunk was tiny, the washroom barely large enough to accommodate her ... she wasn’t even sure she could shut the door.  She silently prayed she didn’t have to share with anyone.  There simply wasn’t enough room.

“There’s a datapad in the compartment under the bunk,” her escort informed her.  “I’m afraid it’s currently disconnected from the starship’s datanet, but you can play games on it if you wish.”

Or start writing my report, Julia thought.  She’d tried not to think about it while she’d been held in the cell, but now ... now she had to work out what she wanted to say.  It wasn’t easy to imagine something that wouldn’t get her disowned, if not sent into permanent exile.  What the hell am I going to say?

She shook her head.  “What time are we leaving?”

“Five hours, they say,” the young man said.  “But we just don’t know.”

Julia nodded as she sat on the bunk, her head brushing against the upper compartment.  She looked up, puzzled.  Was the section meant for two people after all?  Or ... she dismissed the thought with a wave of her hand as her escort bowed and retreated, the hatch closing softly behind him.  She had a nasty feeling she wouldn’t be welcome, if she left the tiny cabin and headed for the bridge.  A chill ran through her as she remembered the former POWs she’d seen below decks.  What would happen if they rioted?  Could they take the ship?  She wondered, for the first time, if she’d made a mistake.  Should she have stayed behind and accepted asylum?

You have a duty to your family, she told herself, severely.  And you damn well have to live up to it.

***

“I haven’t done this since training,” Perkins said.  “Are you sure this is safe?”

Bonkowski snorted, rudely.  “I thought we were Marine Pathfinders, not Junior Cowards.”

“They do a hull scan, they’ll know we’re here,” Perkins said.  “It isn’t as if we’re riding on the hull in suits.”

Phelps glared at the pair of them.  “We’re safe enough, as long as they don’t overhear you two arguing,” he said.  “We’ll just have to put up with each other’s company for a week.”

Rachel snorted as she settled back within the compartment.  The giant troop transport had been a warren even before she’d been battered and forced to surrender by the spacers.  The engineers had patched up the worst of the damage, allowing them to hide the Pathfinders in what was supposed to be a vented and isolated compartment right next to a gash in the hull.  They’d done a good job of both isolating the section and linking it into what remained of the ship’s datanet, ensuring the Pathfinders would have plenty of warning if someone decided to search the depressurised sections.  Rachel silently prayed they wouldn’t even think of trying to make repairs while the ship was in phase space.  The Pathfinders would have to abort the mission if they were discovered.

She looked around, concealing her displeasure.  She’d been in tight spaces before, but not for very long.  There’d always been a sense she could get out for a walk, even when it ran the risk of attracting enemy fire.  Here ... there was too great a chance someone would realise they didn’t belong and raise the alarm.  The spacers had done a good job of mingling enemy personnel from a dozen different units, in hopes of giving the Pathfinders some cover, but it was too risky.  She sighed, inwardly, as she reached for her datapad.  They’d downloaded copies of all the interrogation reports, including the more pointed questions aimed at enemy personnel who’d requested asylum.  They probably guessed the marines intended to infiltrate Onge.  Why else would they ask for details that made little military sense?

Someone might not realise something is wrong if they don’t recognise us, she mused, but they’ll sound the alarm if they realise we’re not wearing the right uniforms.

“It feels like being in prison,” Bonkowski said.  “Which one of us is the snitch?”

“In prison, you meet a better class of person,” Perkins said.  “I have to share a room with you?”

“I’m being punished for something,” Phelps mused.  “I’m a ruddy kindergarten teacher.”

Bonkowski snickered.  “Are we there yet?  Are we there yet?”

“Don’t make me come back there,” Phelps said.  “Tony, I want you keeping an eye on the sensors.  The moment anyone comes near the compartment, I want to know about it.  Rachel, keep monitoring the enemy personnel.  We don’t want them starting a mutiny in the middle of the flight.”

“No,” Bonkowski agreed.  “For once, it wouldn’t work in our favour.”

Rachel nodded as she picked up a datapad and started to flick through the live feed from the sensor nodes.  The entire ship was wired to a degree that bothered her, even though she’d given up on privacy since she’d joined the marines.  A person couldn’t so much as pass wind without alerting the sensors and triggering an automated investigation.  She had the feeling the system could be simply overloaded, with a little effort, but that would probably set off more alerts.  The corprats claimed it was for the good of the workers ... she rather doubted anyone believed it.  The system was designed to head off rebellion before it ever got off the ground.

She felt her eyes narrow as she peered into the POW compartment.  The former prisoners had only just arrived - the transport hadn’t so much as left orbit - but it was clear that trouble was already brewing.  Men were bickering, despite the best efforts of the handful of repatriated officers.  Rachel wasn’t surprised.  They’d lost a lot of their authority, when the fleet had been bested in space and the infantry smashed on the ground.  Perhaps it would have been better to leave the officers with their firearms ... she shook her head.  The transport was too close to the planet for anyone’s peace of mind.  They couldn’t risk a well-timed mutiny leading to utter disaster.

“The hatches are solid,” she said, more to herself than to her comrades.  “They can’t get out.”

“Not without the right tools,” Phelps agreed.  “You got the feeling this ship was designed to do double duty as a prisoner transport?”

“I guess so,” Bonkowski said, seriously for once.  “The entire ship is a honeycomb of sealed compartments.  I don’t think they intended to give their troops the freedom of the vessel.”

Rachel shivered.  She’d spent her entire career in the corps.  She’d been treated as a responsible adult from the moment she’d passed through Boot Camp and entered the Slaughterhouse.  She was expected to follow orders, even if she didn’t understand them; she was expected not to go wandering when she was onboard a transport or MEU.  The enemy soldiers, however, were treated like overgrown children.  Or prisoners.  She was fairly sure such treatment would breed resentment.  There’d be a chance to take advantage of it.

“I’ll tell you what else they didn’t bring,” Bonkowski said.  “Porn!  The WebHeads didn’t find so much as a single naked photo in their datafiles.”

Phelps snorted, rudely.  “Do you ever think about anything else?”

“Sir?”  Bonkowski struck an innocent pose.  “Is there anything else?”

Rachel laughed, then returned to work.

***

“Captain,” Lieutenant Tomas said.  “We have established solid communications links with the Pathfinders on Botany Bay.”

Kerri nodded.  “Keep forwarding the results of the interrogations to them,” she ordered, calmly.  “And do your level best to keep us off their sensors.”

She leaned back in the command chair, feeling a pang of guilt.  Any spacer knew the danger of fiddling with the sensors while underway, let alone deliberately weakening them to create a blindspot.  Havoc could hide within the blindspot and shadow the transport all the way to Onge, hopefully without the enemy crewmen knowing they were being followed.  In theory, they could emerge along the phase limit behind the transport and remain undetected ... if, of course, anyone was watching.  There was no solid data on what communications or sensor capabilities the enemy possessed.  The analysts had assumed the worst.  Onge might be as heavily defended as Sol itself, before Earthfall.

And if we’ve buggered their sensors too far, they might just run into something they should have been able to see, she thought.  Weakening the sensors was one thing, but actually corrupting the datanet codes ... she shook her head, sharply.  She understood the reasoning behind the act.  She just didn’t like it.  At worst, we’ll have to break cover and warn them if they’re about to crash.

“Captain,” Ensign Susan Perkins said.  “Major-General Anderson has cleared us for departure.  The transport is powering up, ready to leave orbit.”

“Helm, prepare to leave orbit as planned,” Kerri said.  She felt a thrill of excitement banishing the guilt.  She was mistress of her ship, but - as long as she flew in company with two Major-Generals - not in sole command of her destiny.  As long as the mission lasted, she - and she alone - would be in command.  “Tactical, establish the sensor mask once we’re clear of the high orbitals.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Kerri smiled as she studied the display.  The troop transport was a lumbering brute of a ship.  She hadn’t even had a name until some marine with a sense of humour had dubbed her Botany Bay.  Havoc could run rings around her with ease, although the transport wasn’t entirely harmless.  A ship that size could do a hell of a lot of damage if someone rammed her into a planet.  The marines had taken the precaution of rigging a nuke to blow the ship to atoms, if the crew tried.  Kerri doubted any of them were suicidal, but ... they’d agreed to go home to a government that was unlikely to welcome them with open arms.  Perhaps they were suicidal.

You’d go back to the corps, even if you were staring down the barrels of a court-martial, she told herself.  It wasn’t a pleasant thought, but it was true.  If she failed so badly ... she’d owe it to the corps to help them learn from her failure.  She wondered, idly, if the enemy personnel felt the same way.  Why would they not?

A low thrumming echoed through the ship.  “Captain,” Commander Joaquin said, formally.  “We are ready to depart.”

“Take us out of orbit,” Kerri ordered.

The thrumming grew stronger as Havoc glided out of orbit and fell into position behind Botany Bay.  Kerri couldn’t help feeling they were so close to the other ship that the enemy crew could see them with the naked eye, although she knew it was impossible.  Havoc was a big ship, but she was tiny compared to the sheer immensity of deep space.  A chill went through her as the ships picked up speed, her vessel quivering as if she wanted to rush past the transport and burst into FTL the moment she crossed the phase limit.  Kerri resisted the urge to do just that.  They had to remain in the blindspot if they wanted to be sure of not being detected.

Shadowing a ship through phase space isn’t easy at the best of times, she thought.  She’d spent a chunk of her pre-Earthfall career chasing pirates, but - even with the best crew and sensors in the known galaxy - she’d rarely been able to track a pirate ship back to its homeport.  Even a comparatively primitive ship could escape, just by random course changes and dropping sensor decoys in the right places.  We’ve rigged everything in our favour and we still might lose the bastards.

She put the thought out of her head and forced herself to wait.  It was unlikely, the analysts agreed, that the enemy would assume their system hadn’t been probed.  There were probably enough ships coming and going, even in the post-Earthfall days, for an intruder to sneak into the system.  Hell, a sufficiently determined intruder could drop out of phase space well short of the limit and make his way into the system, in the certain knowledge he could not possibly be detected.  It would take weeks, if not months, but it could be done.

We have to assume their sensor net is good, she reminded herself, sharply.  And that they’re just as paranoid as we would be, if we were in their shoes.

Shaking her head, she settled down to wait.

Chapter Six

The lumberjack goes to the forest, cuts down a tree and lays claim to the trunk.  We will say, following the classic rectal extraction method, that the trunk is worth roughly ten credits.  Does the lumberjack have, therefore, ten credits?
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

Haverford had probably looked better, Captain Haydn Steel thought as the company marched towards the edge of the city, before two successive invasions and an insurgency had torn the city to bits.  A number of districts had been reduced to rubble, their inhabitants either killed in the fighting or forced to flee.  The all-seeing planetary datanet had been a shadow of its former self before the new government had ordered it dismantled, the massive files of surveillance data on every last member of the population unceremoniously deleted before someone could try to argue for their retention.  Haydn was fairly sure it was just a matter of time before someone would've done just that.  It was easy to make a claim that spying on everyone was good for public safety.

But it might be a while here, he thought.  The snoops had been lynched, when it became clear the datanet was a thing of the past.  People who’d enjoyed spying on their neighbours had discovered, too late, just how much they were loathed.  It’ll be at least a generation before they start forgetting the downsides of limitless surveillance.

He put the thought out of his head as they reached the edge of the city and marched onto what had once been a bowling green.  Haydn wouldn’t have known, if it hadn’t been flagged up on the final mission briefing.  The green looked as if someone had driven an entire brigade of tanks over the grass, turning it into mud before crashing into the buildings and smashing them into the ground.  It was hard to believe it had ever been anything other than a sea of mud.  He shook his head as he slowed, the marines forming into a ceremonial march.  His opposite number from the planetary militia was waiting for him.

“I relieve you,” the planetary officer said.  “And I thank you for your service.”

“I stand relieved,” Haydn said, wondering who’d introduced the militia to military formality.  “And I wish you good luck.”

They exchanged salutes.  Haydn held his a moment longer than necessary, then led his men off the field.  The planet had welcomed the marines - mostly - but he was fairly sure there were a lot of locals who resented them.  The people who’d been on top a few months ago, of course ... the people who’d lost friends and family in the fighting.  The two invasions had killed hundreds of thousands of people, directly or indirectly.  It wasn’t fair to expect the people who’d lost loved ones to be thankful.  Haydn just hoped they wouldn’t seek revenge or turn into bitter-enders.  Either way, it would end badly.

He frowned as they marched onto the road, passing a company of drilling militiamen.  The locals were enthusiastic, and a bunch of them had military training and experience, but they still struck him as being woefully unprepared for modern war.  There was a shortage of experienced officers who could be trusted.  The planetary government had offered amnesty to anyone from the enemy force willing to sign up and share their experience, yet ... could they be trusted?  Haydn had his doubts.  Betrayal tended to be habit-forming.

“I’m sure there was a spaceport here,” someone muttered behind him.  “Once upon a time ...”

Haydn nodded.  The spaceport had served briefly - far too briefly - as a Forward Operating Base.  He and his men had left the planet when the enemy reinforcements had arrived, taking the last flights out of the spaceport before incoming missiles and shells had turned it into a pile of rubble.  Good thinking on their part, he acknowledged sourly, although a little too late.  Major-General Anderson and his staff had already decamped when the missiles came roaring in.  

I guess we weren’t the only ones learning as we went along, he thought.  They could have killed our CO and decapitated us if they’d moved a little quicker.

He put the thought out of his mind as they walked towards the shuttles.  The enemy POWs had cleared what remained of the landing pads and runways, allowing the shuttles to come and go without hindrance.  A command vehicle had been parked on the edge of the spaceport, surrounded by a pair of mobile defence units and a sensor truck.  It would be enough to handle traffic, at least until the local government started to rebuild the spaceport into something usable.  Haydn figured that day was a long time off.  The locals simply had too many other problems right now.

Colonel Foster met them as they reached the edge of the spaceport.  “Captain,” he said, once they’d exchanged salutes.  “Your shuttles will be arriving shortly.”

Haydn nodded.  Saluting was as clear as sign as any that the command staff believed there was no longer any serious danger, not on the surface.  They weren’t allowed to salute in combat zones.  He relaxed, slightly, and watched as more marines flowed towards the shuttles, their officers and sergeants organising them for departure.   They’d be back on the MEUs by nightfall, then ... they could take a break.  It wouldn’t be much - the MEUs were hardly pleasure boats - but it would be something.  The men could unwind and relax, while Haydn and the other officers planned their next move.  Haydn had heard the rumours.  There was practically no chance they were going straight back to Safehouse.

He waited, feeling sweat trickling down his back as the day grew hotter.  The military was fond of ‘hurry up and wait,’ and the marines were no different.  He ignored some grumbling from the ranks, as long as it stayed low.  They could have stayed on patrol, partnering with the militia as they learnt the ropes, or found somewhere to relax on the surface.  Haydn suspected the brass feared an incident, although they would have been hard-pressed to put their feelings into words.  It wouldn’t be the first time a peaceful exit deal was ruined by an idiot acting like an idiot.

A flight of shuttles roared overhead and landed.  Hatches snapped open, allowing their occupants to march out.  Engineers, military and civilian.  Haydn had helped rescue some of them personally, before the marines had been ordered to Hameau.  He hoped they’d find it easy to blend into their new homeworld, or - if they didn’t - that they’d have no trouble leaving and going somewhere else.  Trained personnel were worth their weight in gold, these days, but they couldn’t be forced to work.  Resentful people in sensitive places could do a hell of a lot of damage before they were stopped.

“Good luck, Captain,” Foster said.  He waved at the shuttles.  “They’re all yours.”

Haydn nodded and led his men through the hatch and into the shuttle.  It was designed to carry an entire company of marines, although - normally - the unit was spread out over two or three shuttles to ensure that one hit didn’t take out the entire company.  Another sign, he supposed, that the brass felt relatively safe.  There were no snipers with HVMs lurking close to the spaceport, or what remained of it; there was, he assumed, very little enemy presence at all.  He gritted his teeth as the shuttle rocked, the hatch banging closed and the pilot starting his wretched prattle.  In his experience, it was very hard to exterminate an entire enemy force.  The snipers he’d chased down earlier might be nothing more than the tip of the iceberg.

And we don’t know how many enemy soldiers got drowned when we blew the mountain and unleashed the flood, he reminded himself.  Thousands of bodies had been swept downwards to the sea.  The locals had picked up a number of dead soldiers and taken their bodies to mass graves, but thousands had never been found and buried.  It was quite possible that some of them had survived and gone rogue, living off the land in a demented bid to continue the war until they died.  The locals are never going to be sure they’re all gone.

He shook his head as the shuttle powered up its drives, then leapt for the sky.  The normal evasive manoeuvres were also gone.  A good sign, but also something that bothered him.  Better to take precautions and look paranoid than not take precautions and wind up dead.  He tried to put the thought out of his mind as he keyed the datapad and linked into the shuttle’s communications systems.  Havoc had departed orbit, two days ago.  He felt a flicker of discontent, which he ruthlessly suppressed.  He’d had no reason to think his brief affair with Captain Stumbaugh would last.  There’d certainly been no guarantee his unit would be assigned to Havoc again.  And there was no way he could ask.

Major-General Anderson would not be pleased if I tried, he thought.  He wouldn’t want personal feelings interfering with our duties.

The shuttle’s gravity field twisted as it docked with the MEU.  Haydn felt the stomach-twisting sensation, feeling - once again - as though the world was slightly out of kilter.  He’d never quite gotten used to it, although he’d learnt to keep the reaction under control.  There were poor bastards who honestly couldn’t handle it.  They tended to stay planetside and never leave their homeworlds. 

Poor bastards, he thought.

Command Sergeant Mayberry raised his voice as the hatches opened.  “Report to your berths, then relax,” he barked.  “And don’t leave your compartments without permission.”

Hayden smiled at the handful of good-natured groans.  The MEU was designed for the Marine Corps.  There was no such thing as Marine Country on a ship that was owned and operated by the Marine Corps.  But they had to stay in their berths, at least until the ship was underway and they could move about without getting in the way ... he smiled.  No one was going to be shooting at them.  For real, at least.  He made a mental note to arrange more training time in a day or two.  It would keep them busy.

He watched the men hurrying through the hatch, then nodded to Mayberry.  The Command Sergeant would keep an eye on them.  He returned his datapad to his belt and headed through the hatch himself, making his way down to the briefing room.  As always, it was a scene of organised chaos.  Holographic images glided around like ghosts, brushing shoulders with flesh and blood officers from the MEU.  He was mildly surprised they weren’t meeting in person, although he supposed he shouldn’t have been.  The only thing all the rumours agreed upon was that the two divisions would be moving out within the week.

“Captain,” a voice said.  “Major-General Anderson requests the pleasure of your company.”

Hayden turned to see Lieutenant Gold, looking as tired and harassed as the rest of the officers.  The corps was designed for hasty movement from planet to planet, but loading up the marines and their equipment - and ordering replacements for everything lost during the campaign - was never easy.  It didn’t help, he supposed, that so much of the original chain of command had been shot to pieces during the war.  There would be so many gaps in the manifests that the pre-Earthfall Inspectorate General would have a field day.

“I’m coming,” Haydn said.  A request from a senior officer was an order.  There was no point in trying to deny it.  “He’s in his office?”

Gold nodded, then hurried off to do something else.  Haydn felt a flicker of sympathy as he made his way around the compartment, passing a bunch of logistics officers who were waving datapads at each other as if they were weapons.  The marines had expended more ammunition during the fighting than anyone had expected, if the reports were accurate.  It would take time, time they didn’t have, for the factory ships to start replenishing their stockpiles.  They were lucky, he reflected sourly, that the second division had arrived.  They’d have enough supplies to handle a major engagement.

Major-General Anderson’s hatch was closed.  Haydn pressed his hand against the scanner and waited.  Anderson would have left the hatch open if he wanted people to just walk in and out of the office ... Haydn snorted at the thought.  Senior officers thought they were owed a little privacy.  They probably were - if nothing else, they had to handle matters junior officers weren’t supposed to know about - but it still irked him.  He rather suspected he’d change his mind when - if - he reached such rarefied heights himself.

The hatch hissed open.  Haydn stepped into the office and looked around with interest.  It appeared no more permanent than a FOB in the middle of a warzone, complete with collapsible furniture, portable datapads, and holographic projectors.  A lone drinks dispenser was parked against the far bulkhead.  Haydn suspected it was designed to send a very clear message to visitors as well as its owner, a reminder that no one - not even the Major-General himself - would remain permanently on the giant starship.  They’d be going in harm’s way soon enough.  

And the starship is one hell of a target, if any enemy warships start prowling around, Haydn thought.  He came to attention and saluted, smartly.  The entire division might get blown away if she is caught and trapped before she can retreat.

“At ease,” Anderson ordered.  His voice was gruff, suggesting he wished he was somewhere - anywhere - else.  The senior officers had to do a lot of paperwork, even though the corps cut it down to the bare minimum.  There’d been Imperial Army officers who did nothing but paperwork.  It probably wasn’t a coincidence that their units tended to be the least capable on the field.  “Welcome back, Captain.  Help yourself to coffee.”

“Thank you, sir,” Haydn said.  

He relaxed, slightly.  If he was being offered coffee, he probably wasn’t in trouble.  He poured himself a mug of coffee from the dispenser, added a hint of sugar and turned to face his ultimate commanding officer.  It wasn’t the first time they’d met.  Major-General Anderson was good at talking to his subordinates, making sure he had a clear picture of what was actually going on.  Haydn admired that in him.  It was all too easy for a senior officer to look down from his lofty perch and completely miss the little details.

“You did good work down there,” Anderson said.  “Do you think the city is relatively stable?”

“Relatively, sir,” Haydn said.  “The local economy has been shot to hell.  They’re eating ration bars and drinking recycled water ...”

“A known cause of civil unrest,” Anderson said.  His lips twitched in a faint smile.  “And the enemy snipers?”

“We captured or killed every enemy soldier we encountered, sir,” Haydn said.  “However, I cannot guarantee we got them all.”

“No, of course not,” Anderson agreed.  “Some of them will throw away their weapons and try to blend into the crowd.  Others will bury their weapons and wait for a chance to strike again.”

“The locals will handle them,” Haydn said.  “They might not be entirely fond of us, sir, but they’re even less fond of their former overlords.”

“We can, but hope.”  Anderson looked him in the eye.  “Are your men ready for deployment?”

Haydn hesitated.  “We lost seven men during the battle in space,” he said.  He felt each and every one of those losses.  He’d have to spend time writing to their families, if their families were still around.  Earthfall had shattered everything.  The families could have fled the chaos or ... or died, caught up in one of the civil wars that had started tearing the remnants of the empire apart.  “Three more were wounded, but should return to active duty within the next two months.  The remainder are ... tired, sir; tired but ready to resume their duties if necessary.”

“It may become necessary,” Anderson said.  “We’ll be leaving the system within the next two days and heading for the RV point.  Depending on what Havoc finds, we may be going straight into action.  We just don’t know.”

He keyed a terminal and brought up an image.  Haydn leaned forward.  A cone ... a small emergency landing pod?  No, the scale was too big.  A dumpster, designed to land enough supplies to set up a small colony in a single drop.  He frowned.  The basic idea of using them to land troops had been around for centuries, but the Onge had been the first people to actually risk it.  Their troops had had no line of retreat.  They could have been caught on the ground, if the defenders had had enough warning, and annihilated.  No wonder they’d expended so much firepower on flattening anything that so much as looked like a threat.  They didn’t dare risk letting their forces be pocketed and destroyed before they had a chance to deploy.

“We may need to get a lot of troops to the ground in a hurry,” Major-General Anderson said.  It was easy to tell he wasn’t remotely happy about it.  “This may be our only option.”

“All or nothing,” Haydn said.  He felt a thrill of excitement, mingled with fear.  It would be daring ... the sort of daring idea that was best suppressed unless they were truly desperate.  Were they?  “Sir?”

“Yes,” Anderson said.  His face was grim.  “Prepare your men.  We may have no choice, but to risk everything on a single throw of the dice.”

“Yes, sir,” Haydn said.  “We could land an entire regiment with a dumpster.”

“Yes,” Anderson agreed.  He lowered his voice, echoing Haydn’s thoughts.  “And there’ll be no way to get them off in a hurry if the operation goes badly wrong.”

Chapter Seven

No, of course not.  He has, at best, the potential for ten credits.  The value of the trunk depends on the beholder.  One person may value it highly, another may see it as just ... useless wood.  The trunk is only worth ten credits to the right person.  And, of course, unless the lumberjack sells the trunk it will be effectively worthless.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

The hatch bleeped, once.

Julia looked up.  The voyage hadn’t been as bad as she’d feared, once they’d dropped into FTL and left Hameau behind.  The crew had served ration bars and water and otherwise insisted she stay in her cabin, but ... she told herself she should enjoy the flight.  Admiral Agate had once told her about officers who’d told their men to enjoy the war, as the peace was going to be terrible.  Julia understood how they felt.  She was going to be in deep trouble the moment she stepped off the transport, if not before.  Someone had probably already reported home, just to destroy Julia’s career.  It was what she would have done.

“Come,” she said.

The hatch hissed open.  The young man - Ensign Taros - stuck his head into the compartment and saluted.  Julia hid her irritation with an effort.  Taros didn’t seem to be able to decide if he should be treating her as a lowly civilian, on the ground she was a guest on the transport, or kissing her ass because she was corporate royalty.  Julia was tempted to point out that kissing her ass was likely to end badly, if only because her career was about to fall so far and so fast she’d probably wind up on the other side of the planet.  Anyone who stood too close to her would be struck by the disaster.  Anyone she recommended for promotion would probably be demoted instead.

“Commissioner.”  Taros saluted, again.  “The Captain wants you on the bridge.”

Julia stood, brushing down her ill-fitting tunic and tucking the datapad under one arm as she followed him out of the hatch.  She had grown to loathe the cabin in the last few days, even though she knew it was vastly superior to sleeping in the onboard barracks or cargo holds.  The air smelled faintly unpleasant, as if the life support was reaching the limits of its capacity.  Julia knew little about starship mechanics, but she knew enough to be concerned.  If the atmosphere went bad, they were doomed.  The thought wasn’t reassuring.

She breathed a sigh of relief as she followed Taros onto the bridge.  It was small and cramped, compared to the battlecruiser’s command deck; it looked as if someone had thrown a dozen consoles together at random and wired them into a holographic command network.  A middle-aged man sat in the centre of the compartment, looking as if he were worried and trying to hide it.  Julia didn’t recognise him.  He probably hadn’t been assigned to Hammerblow.  He’d have some other commissioner keeping an eye on his behaviour.

“Commissioner,” the captain said.  “I’m Captain Arbroath.  Thank you for coming.”

You could have invited me at any moment, Julia thought as she shook his hand.  She knew she was being unfair and she didn’t really care.  It wasn’t as if I was doing anything more important than trying to find a way to blame everything on someone else.

“Thank you,” she said.  “What’s happening now?”

“We’re about to drop out of phase space,” Captain Arbroath informed her.  “I thought you would like to contact your superiors.”

Julia gave him a sharp look.  She was no expert, but she wasn’t a complete ignorant either.  “I thought it took at least ten hours to get a message from the phase limit to the planet.”

“It does,” Captain Arbroath confirmed.  “However, we’re running on empty here.  Our life support is on the verge of breaking down.  We need to offload at least a third of our passengers within the next twenty-four hours or we’ll be in deep shit.”

“I see,” Julia said.  “Why didn’t they give us more life support?”

“They did,” Captain Arbroath said.  “But the datanet is too badly battered to handle it.  If they hadn’t hardwired the course into the navigational system, I wouldn’t be entirely confident we’re heading to the right place.  We rely so much on our computers that we’re lost without them.”

Julia nodded, curtly.  “I’ll transmit as soon as we arrive,” she said.  “And hopefully ... they’ll listen.”

She took a seat and waited, watching the displays as they counted down to zero.  The reports were largely incomprehensible, but she understood some things.  On impulse, she tested the datanet.  It was so slow and crude it felt like something out of a museum.  She shook her head, then swallowed - hard - as the transport ground her way back to realspace.  Julia’s stomach heaved.  She had to force herself not to be sick.  Judging from the noise behind her, not everyone had been so lucky.

“The communications console is ready,” Captain Arbroath said.  The display lit up, showing a handful of planets orbiting a star.  If there was anything close enough to be a threat, it wasn’t showing up.  “Commissioner?”

Julia took a breath, trying to decide what to say.  The week in transit suddenly felt very short ... too short.  She suddenly didn’t want the voyage to end.  She told herself, sharply, not to be stupid.  The life support was already failing.  Soon, they’d suffocate in their own wastes.  She wanted to live.  She wanted to ... she wasn’t sure what she wanted.  All her hopes and dreams had died when Hammerblow had surrendered.

“This is Julia Ganister-Onge, Political Commissioner attached to OSS Hammerblow,” she said.  “We require assistance.  I say again, we require assistance.  This ship’s life support is failing.  We require immediate assistance.”

She sat back, allowing Captain Arbroath to take over and explain what was actually going on.  It was unlikely anyone would refuse, now the transport had declared an emergency, but it was impossible to be sure.  She tried to tell herself they wouldn’t let her die, yet ... she had to admit she was an embarrassment.  Her family might be happier if she died a long way from home, rather than returning in failure.  And yet, they needed to know what had happened.  Didn’t they?  If someone had been watching the battle from a distance and slipped back to report ... they wouldn’t know everything.  She hoped ...

“That’s the message sent,” Captain Arbroath said.  “We’ll be heading in-system now.”

Julia looked at him.  “Shouldn’t we wait for permission?”

“We don’t have time,” Captain Arbroath said.  “It’ll take ten hours, more or less, for the message to reach Onge.  Even if they reply at once, which they won’t, it’ll still take another ten hours for the message to get here.  We have to head to the planet, to the orbital station, and hope to hell they let us dock without delay.  If they don’t ...”

He waved a hand at a display.  Julia couldn’t understand what she was seeing, but she was sure that a line of red lights was nothing good.  She shook her head as a dull rumble echoed through the giant ship, a grim reminder that her realspace drives had been badly damaged during the fighting.  Tenos had even told her that there were entire sections that were still depressurized, effectively unreachable.  Given the limits on the life support, Julia thought that wasn’t a bad thing.  They simply didn’t have the capacity to spare.

“Just get us there as quickly as possible,” Julia said.  Her eyes lingered on the display.  A lot of icons that should have been present weren’t.  The cloudscoops, the asteroid miners, the in-system transports ... all gone.  She told herself the sensors had been badly damaged during the engagement.  “And hope they take us in without an argument.”

“Hopefully,” Captain Arbroath agreed.

***

“They’ve just transmitted a rather worrying message,” Rachel said.  “Their life support is on the verge of conking out.”

Phelps nodded, his expression grim as he paced the tiny compartment.  Rachel understood.  They’d timed it well, in hopes of convincing the enemy defences to let Botany Bay enter orbit without searching the transport from top to bottom, but she knew it was quite possible the locals wouldn’t believe the message.  There was no way to verify the ship’s distress without actually being there and that would take time the ship and her passengers didn’t have.  She felt a little guilty.  It wasn’t the worst thing she’d ever done to carry out her duties - she had a long list of things she regretted, for one reason or another - but that might change if the air turned poisonous before the ship could be unloaded.  She’d never sentenced thousands of people to death ...

She turned her attention back to the live feed from the ship’s sensors.  The system was rather more densely populated than the files suggested, although that wasn’t a surprise.  The files had been hopelessly out of date before Earthfall had destroyed them.  Onge had at least five cloudscoops - and probably more, given that one gas giant was on the other side of the primary star - and hundreds, perhaps thousands of asteroid mining colonies.  She guessed the corprats had stepped up their recruiting missions, snatching up trained personnel from every star system within range.  Why not?  It was what they’d been doing when the marines first discovered their existence.  

“You do realise they may not be very welcoming?”  Perkins looked up from his blanket.  “They might just put a missile in our hull from a safe distance.”

“They’ll want to know what the passengers know,” Phelps pointed out.  “And blowing up an entire ship of ex-POWs will be shitty for morale.”

“Assuming anyone finds out about it,” Bonkowski countered.  “This ship could easily be branded an enemy vessel, just another raider full of pirates that got blown away before they could start shooting holes in a handful of asteroid colonies.  You take a PR specialist and he’ll turn the worst atrocity in human history into a just and necessary act.”

“Wankers,” Perkins commented.  “For all they know, this ship is carrying a bunch of conditioned assholes with orders to assassinate their bosses.”

“They can handle the risk,” Phelps said.  “And, like I said, they’ll want to know what the passengers know.”

Rachel turned her attention back to the latest datapacket from Havoc.  There probably wouldn’t be any more, at least as long as the situation remained stable.  The POWs had offered hundreds of insights into enemy culture and civilisation, although there was no way to know what was missing until it was too late.  Rachel was used to winging it, but she preferred to have at least a rough idea of what they were getting into.  She’d be happier making a blind drop to the surface.  There, at least, they could sneak around and spy on the locals, building up a picture of their society before they tried to get inside.  It would be simpler ...

Not that we’d have any more chance to get out, if things go wrong, she thought, as she leaned back against the bulkhead.  If we get caught, we’re toast.

Perkins sat up and checked his datapad.  “If the crew manages to keep the speed up, they’ll enter orbit in twenty hours or so.”

“Then we’ll be ready to jump ship,” Phelps said.  “Get some rest.  I want to be well away from the ship before they start searching her.”

“And hope we can find somewhere to hide,” Rachel said.  The suits were designed to be hard to detect, but they weren’t cloaked.  Crossing a sensor net would reveal their presence as surely as sending up a sensor flare.  Hell, they could be spotted with the naked eye, if someone got lucky.  “We’ll have to hack their datanet if we want to get in.”

“True,” Phelps said.  There was an edge in his voice that hadn’t been there before.  The voyage had been wearing, even though they’d done very little.  “But one problem at a time, all right?”

“Yes, sir,” Rachel said.

***

The giant mansion had been designed, Director Thaddeus Onge had been told, in a style that dated all the way back to the family’s roots on Old Earth.  Thaddeus himself hadn’t been so sure.  It looked as if a dozen different styles had been merged together to produce a building that would have been elegant, if it hadn’t been so ... jarring.  Personally, he suspected the building designer had taken his ancestors for a ride.  The ancestral mansion was long gone, assuming it had ever existed in the first place; it was difficult, judging by what few records had survived centuries of unrest on Earth, to be sure the mansions in photographs had genuinely belonged to them.  Anyone who claimed photographs couldn’t be faked was either ignorant or a liar.

Not that it matters, he thought as he let the dogs race around the garden.  The future is ours, and to hell with the past.

He smiled, and tried to relax.  Someone - he’d forgotten who - had once joked that anyone who wanted a friend on Earth needed to buy a dog.  He was becoming depressingly aware that that was true on Onge, too.  Everyone wanted something from him, from simple investment to ... to anything.  Thaddeus had an entire staff charged with handling requests for money, meetings and everything else along those lines, but some things couldn’t be left to them.  Thaddeus had to keep on top of his work or the project his ancestors had started would be as doomed as Old Earth herself.

His eyes narrowed as he peered into the distance, towards the growing megacity and the orbital elevator beyond.  The city had never been intended to get so large.  In hindsight, it might have been easier to spread it out a little ... even though it risked losing the advantages of concentrating so much talent and resources in a relatively small space.  It had been turning into a major headache even before Earthfall, when they’d started recruiting trained personnel and their families and rushing them to safety.  Thaddeus knew Onge was safe - the PDC on the distant mountaintop was a grim reminder of the family’s investment in security - but the influx of so many refugees was causing its own problems.  The planetary society was never intended to take so many newcomers so quickly.  In hindsight, they should have invested more in farms and farming and little hamlets ...

“Your Lordship!”

Thaddeus turned.  Daisy, his aide, was hurrying towards him, carrying a portable communicator in one hand and a datapad in the other.  Thaddeus scowled, then concealed his irritation as best as he could.  Daisy had been with him long enough to understand the importance of dog-time.  She wouldn’t interrupt him unless it was truly urgent.  It could cost her a position that made her one of the most influential people on the planet.

“Yes?”

“General Gilbert called for you,” Daisy said.  “He insisted it was urgent.”

“It probably is,” Thaddeus said.  General Jim Gilbert didn’t like his political superiors interfering in purely military decisions.  He wouldn’t have contacted his ultimate superior if it hadn’t been necessary.  “Let me talk to him.”

He took the communicator and held it to his mouth.  “Jim.  What’s happening?”

“Sir,” Gilbert said.  “A troop transport, one of the ships from Admiral Agate’s fleet, has returned.  She’s insisting she’s overcrowded with former POWs and requesting urgent permission to dock.”

Thaddeus blinked.  “Former POWs?”

“Yes, sir,” Gilbert said.  “We don’t have a solid briefing yet, but from what we’ve heard Admiral Agate appears to have lost. “

“... I see.”  Thaddeus controlled himself with an effort.  He didn’t know enough.  Not yet.  “When will this transport arrive?”

“Roughly nine hours from now,” Gilbert said.  “If their messages are accurate, their life support is failing and they desperately need to offload some passengers before it’s too late.”

Thaddeus forced himself to think.  What had happened?  Admiral Agate had had enough firepower to smash his way to Hameau, punch his way through what remained of the defences, clobber the marines from orbit and land troops to mop up what remained of the invaders.  He shouldn’t have been defeated.  What the fuck had happened?  It was impossible to believe the marines were deploying battlecruisers, let alone battleships.  The manpower requirements alone should have made it difficult, if not impossible.  

“Sir.”  Gilbert audibly gulped for air.  “We need to let them dock at one of the immigration stations.  It’s designed to handle thousands of sudden arrivals.”

“They could be lying,” Thaddeus pointed out.  “Do we have any real proof?”

“I’ve already got shuttles en route to check out the story,” Gilbert said.  “However, sir, we have to proceed on the assumption they’re telling the truth.”

“Yes.”  Thaddeus let out a breath, then started to rattle out orders.  “Clear the immigration station.  Get everyone already there off before you let the freighter dock.  Then ... hold the newcomers until we have a chance to assess their story.  Total news blackout.  No messages off the station without prior permission.  Make sure they haven’t been conditioned or anything.”

“Yes, sir,” Gilbert said.

“And call an emergency meeting, to be held one hour from now,” Thaddeus continued.  “We need a plan.  Quickly.”

“Yes, sir,” Gilbert echoed.

Thaddeus passed the communicator back to Daisy, then looked at the dogs.  They were still gambolling happily, unaware that their human had bigger problems.  Thaddeus envied them their innocence.  They didn’t understand what had been lost.  They didn’t understand what might still be lost.  The timing was horrible.  His day had been ruined.

“Order one of the boys to come and take over,” he told Daisy.  There was no point in trying to retrieve the day.  “And then have coffee brought to my study.”

Daisy curtseyed.  “Yes, sir.”
Chapter Eight

A smart student might argue, at this point, that the lumberjack could burn the trunk for firewood.  This is obviously true.  But ... the value of the trunk would remain stable right up until the trunk was burnt to ashes, whereupon it would be definitely worthless.  The lumberjack’s potential wealth would drop, sharply.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

“Commissioner,” Captain Arbroath said.  “They’re dispatching a shuttle to investigate.”

Julia nodded.  Her entire body felt as if it was creaking helplessly. She’d declined suggestions she should go back to her cabin, then drifted off to sleep on the bridge.  The chair hadn’t been comfortable, but ... she forced herself to stand, wishing - again - for a long bath and a massage.  She’d settle for a shower and a change of clothes.  She was ruefully aware she stank.  She wasn’t alone.  The entire crew smelt terrible.

“Have them dock as soon as possible,” she said.  The air tasted stale.  She tried to tell herself she was imagining it.  It didn’t work.  She could almost hear laboured sounds coming from the air processors.  “Have you told them I’m onboard?”

“We forwarded a datapacket, yes,” Captain Arbroath said.  “I assume they’ve had a chance to look at it.”

Julia forced herself to sit and wait as the shuttle flew closer.  The sensors were battered almost to the point of uselessness.  If the shuttle hadn’t been broadcasting an IFF signal, they wouldn’t have been able to track it at all.  She shivered, wondering if they were on the verge of crashing into an asteroid or even an entire planet.  The odds of accidentally ramming an asteroid were very low - dense asteroid fields only existed in bad flicks - but it was hard to escape the impression that she didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on.  The planetary defences were probably already locked on the hull.  If they came too close, without permission, they’d be blown to atoms.

“The shuttle is requesting permission to dock,” an officer said.  He looked up from his console.  “Captain?”

“Open the forward hatch,” Captain Arbroath ordered.  “And let them enter alone.”

Julia shot him a sharp look.  Naval protocol insisted visitors had to be greeted by the ship’s officers, if not the commanding officer personally.  She supposed they weren’t exactly dealing with a normal boarding party.  Captain Arbroath keyed his console, bringing up the live feed from the handful of remaining interior sensors as the shuttle docked.  Julia watched, silently, as the hatch opened and four armoured men entered the ship.  They were so heavily armoured she couldn’t help wondering what they thought they were walking into.  An ambush?  A trap?  Or ... or what?

She tensed as the armoured figures made their way towards the bridge.  This was it.  This was ... she swallowed, hard, as it dawned on her she was committed.  Hell, she’d been committed from the moment she’d refused the offer of asylum.  Her reports had been included in the datapacket ... she shuddered, her mouth suddenly dry.  Her superiors had had nearly thirteen hours to read the report, then decide what to do with her.  She wondered if the boarding party had orders to open the airlocks, depressurise the entire ship and direct the hulk into the primary star.  It was paranoia, but ... she shook her head.  Her superiors wouldn’t condemn everyone on the ship to death for her failures.  Unless ...

The bridge hatch opened.  Julia felt a flash of déjà vu.  The newcomers weren’t carrying their weapons at the ready, but otherwise they reminded her of the marines boarding the battlecruiser a few short weeks ago.  She knew she should stand to greet them, but her legs refused to cooperate.  The featureless helms were terrifying.  She couldn’t see so much as a rank badge, let alone a nametag.  There was no hope of complaining, again, if she didn’t know who she should be complaining about.

“Welcome,” Captain Arbroath said.  “As you can see, this ship is in poor condition.”

The boarding party walked to the consoles and plugged their suits into the local nodes.  Julia watched, all too aware they were scanning every last inch of the ship.  If anything looked wrong ... she gritted her teeth, cursing as she remembered just how many of the internal datanet nodes were beyond repair.  The boarding party would have to search the ship physically, if they wanted to make sure the ship was completely harmless.  That would take hours.  The passengers didn’t have time.

“The ship will be guided to an immigration station,” an armoured figure said.  Julia guessed he was the commander.  “You will be held there until your future has been determined.  Any resistance will result in the destruction of your vessel.”

Julia saw Captain Arbroath’s lips tighten at the words.  He wasn’t a pirate, flying on a pirate ship.  He was a decorated officer in the Onge Navy ... he didn’t deserve to be treated like a criminal.  None of them deserved to be treated like a criminal ... her heart sank as she realised it was just a matter of time before she was marched before her superiors and ordered to explain.  She wished, not for the first time, that Admiral Agate had accompanied her.  She could’ve hidden behind him when their superiors started allocating the blame.

One of the boarding party remained at the helm.  The others started calling in more shuttles.  Julia guessed they were going to start uplifting passengers and shipping them directly to the immigration station, rather than risk leaving them on the ship.  The transport’s condition was obvious.  Julia had no doubt the ship’s life support was on its last legs.  The shuttles couldn’t hope to make up the difference.

She sat back and watched the display as the planet came closer.  The giant immigration station was emptying rapidly, if the hundreds of shuttles flying around the structure were any indication.  They wouldn’t want to risk contaminating the immigrants, the willing and the unwilling alike, with bad news from a distant world.  She wondered, idly, if anyone outside the navy and government knew the ship had arrived.  She’d heard rumours of hidden datanet channels used by hackers, allowing underground groups to share information, but they’d never been anything more than rumours.  The official line was that they didn’t exist and never would.  Julia had been in corporate service long enough to know that might well be untrue.

“Commissioner Ganister-Onge?”

Julia looked up.  One of the faceless men was looking at her.  “Yes?”

“You will accompany us,” the faceless man said.  “You have an appointment.”

In Samarra, Julia thought, darkly.  She wondered if she had time to go back to her cabin and splash water on her face.  Probably not.  The newcomers had discouraged crewmen from leaving the bridge, even as they’d landed more and more armoured troopers on the hull.  She suspected they were readying themselves to deal with a riot.  I suppose I should be glad they’re offloading me before the ship docks.

She stood.  “I’m coming.”

***

Rachel watched, coldly, as more and more armoured troopers flooded onto the transport and started to search the corridors.  It was clear, from the flurry of activity, that whoever was in charge was making it up as he went along, but she had to admit he was doing a good job.  The boarding party had confirmed the transport’s life support was about to fail, then taken control and steered her towards the giant immigration station.  Rachel doubted the corps could have done much better.  There really hadn’t been many other options if the corprats wanted to keep the passengers alive.

She frowned as she studied the live feeds from the sensors and compared them to the files.  The latter were almost laughably out of date.  The transport’s sensors were picking up hundreds of orbital structures, from a pair of giant anchors for the space elevators to orbital weapons platforms, industrial nodes and asteroid habitats.  It looked as though they’d prefabricated the platforms, then hastily assembled them shortly after Earthfall.  Rachel was morbidly impressed as she continued her scans.  The corprats had practically thrown the whole thing together in zero time.

It’s astonishing what one can do if one has an unlimited budget and a complete lack of scruples, she mused.  There was a great deal of radio traffic, seemingly uncensored.  She was pretty sure it was monitored closely for signs of wrongthink.  If they’d had more time, they might have risen to dominate the entire sector.

She shifted uncomfortably inside the Pathfinder suit.  The suit was designed for long-term occupancy, she’d been assured, but there was nothing the designers could do to make it more comfortable.  She would have preferred to remain in the blister, outside the suit, but the risk of detection was too great.  A sudden burst of vented air would draw attention, if the enemy was feeling paranoid.  The last thing they needed was the transport ‘s hull being swarmed by more enemy soldiers.  They’d sell their lives dearly, but they’d end up dead.

More icons appeared on the display.  There were surprisingly few warships - she reminded herself that meant nothing, as the sensors were far from mil-grade - but there were thousands of shuttles, worker bees and interplanetary ships in clear view.  The latter might well be dangerous, even if they didn’t have FTL drives.  There was no problem in arming them ... hell, the corprats might have just bolted a handful of missile launchers to their hulls in hopes of providing more firepower at the crucial moment.  She checked the laser communicator was sending messages back to Havoc, relaying everything they’d picked up to the cruiser.  She’d be making her own survey of the system, but she couldn’t get too close.  The risk of detection was dangerously high.

“They’re moving the commissioner to the shuttle,” Phelps said, pressing his helmet against hers.  “I think we should ride along.”

Rachel nodded.  The high orbitals were glowing with everything from active sensors to radio and radar beacons.  The corprats were clearly very aware of the danger of cloaked ships.  She thought they could remain undetected, if they jumped ship and headed for the nearest asteroid habitat, but it wasn’t a sure thing.  Riding on the shuttle would be easier and safer, particularly if it headed straight for the anchor.  Rachel was fairly sure it would.  The sensors suggested, very strongly, that there were no shuttles heading to the planet itself.

Odd, she mused.  But not important at the moment.

She felt a thrill of excitement as they performed one final check of the suits and what remained of the blister, then opened the hatch and stepped out onto the hull.  There was nothing left to alert the enemy to their presence, if - when - the searchers opened up the depressurised section and investigated.  What little evidence they’d left over the last week had already been disintegrated or hurled into space.  By the time it was found, if it ever was, it would be too late.  

They communicated using hand gestures as they made their way across the hull to the enemy shuttlecraft.  They’d picked the transport with malice aforethought - the hull wasn’t remotely smooth, making it harder for motion detectors to pick up on their presence - but she knew better than to take it for granted.  The shuttles were standard designs, copied from the Imperial Navy.  She hoped the corprats hadn’t made any improvements.  The analysts had suggested the corprat designers had reserved the really advanced technology for themselves, for the day they’d declare independence, but Rachel doubted they were that clever.  It was far more likely the Grand Senate and the Imperial Navy had refused to pay for pure research that might or might not lead to usable technology.  They’d been at the top of the heap.  They wouldn’t want something that might upset the order of things.

And Earthfall did it anyway, she thought, as they reached the shuttle.  Her sensors warned her the craft was already powering up its drives.  The corprats wanted their answers yesterday.  She felt a flicker of sympathy for the poor commissioner, even though she was ... well, a commissioner.  The woman was at the mercy of superiors who wouldn’t want to hear the truth.  They wanted to hold everything in stasis ...

The Pathfinders attached themselves to the hull, concealed themselves out of direct eyesight and waited.  The shuttle disengaged and spun away into interplanetary space.  Rachel waited, her mouth suddenly dry.  They might have to jump off in a hurry if the shuttle headed towards a shuttlebay, rather than a docking port.  There was no way to know.  Rachel would have preferred the docking port herself, if she was transporting dangerous prisoners, but ... it wasn’t as if the prisoners were physically dangerous.  It was what they knew that made them so dangerous.  She assessed the radio chatter as best as she could, trying to determine what - if anything - had leaked out.  It was impossible.  The chatter came in fits and starts.  It was difficult to tell what was important and what wasn’t.  

She tensed as the shuttle approached the giant anchor.  Space elevators were normally attached to asteroids, but the corprats had thrown together a giant space station and attached the elevator cable to that instead.  She puzzled over it for a long moment, wondering why they hadn’t used an asteroid.  Was there some advantage to the design?  Or hadn’t they wanted to take the risk of bringing another asteroid into orbit?  It wasn’t as if they hadn’t already brought a number into orbit ... maybe they’d had some idea that hadn’t quite panned out.  Or maybe she was overthinking it.  The corprats might have simply wanted to put an elevator anchor together as quickly as possible.

Phelps caught her attention as the shuttle reduced speed.  It looked as though they were heading towards a docking port.  Rachel breathed a sigh of relief.  Jumping ship so close to the giant station risked detection ... they might be taken for space junk and fired upon without the enemy ever knowing what they’d done.  She kept her eyes open as the station grew larger and larger until it dominated the horizon, noting how many different structures had been woven together into one.  There would be plenty of room to hide on the hull, she told herself.  They’d just have to be very careful when they tried to find a way in.

The shuttle slowed, then docked.  Rachel felt a shudder running through the craft as its gravity field merged with the station’s.  She stood, disengaging her maglocks and jumping through space to land on the station’s hull.  The horizon seemed to shift, a twist in perspective that had never failed to make her head hurt.  She gritted her teeth as she crawled over the hull, feeling naked and exposed.  The rest of the unit followed her, looking for a place to hide.  They’d have to hang out on the hull until they got inside and blended into the local population.  Thankfully, there were so many people on the station that no one could hope to know them all.

As long as we can fool the security monitors, she thought as they found an exposed sensor node and started to work, we can fool everyone.

Her lips curved up.  People tended to believe in technology, even though they shouldn’t.  It was easy, with the right training and equipment, to insert anything into the files and have it believed.  The corprats had devised one hell of a surveillance system - she still shuddered when she thought how easily it had been misused - but they rested far too much faith in it.  She had no doubt it could be turned against them.  If nothing else, they could hack themselves new identities within the system and be taken for Onge personnel ...

Concentrate, she told herself sharply.  If this goes wrong, we’re doomed.

Data flowed into her HUD as she linked into the enemy system.  The sensor node wasn’t tied to the main datanet trunk, but it didn’t matter.  Someone had melded the two systems together, probably out of a desire for convenience.  Her lips curled into a cold smile.  One could install the most advanced security system in the known universe and some yahoo would still do something to weaken it, even if it was something as minor as setting the password to ‘password.’  Whoever had rigged the system had created a back door into the main datanet and probably didn’t even know it.  She guessed he was no WebHead.  Most people didn’t even begin to understand what went on inside their datapads, let alone how easily they could be hacked and turned into enemy spies.  The corprats probably saw that as a feature, not a bug.  They’d see a great many advantages in spying on their people.

Her smile got bigger as more and more data opened up in front of her.  The high-security files were still sealed - and there would be datanodes that were physically isolated from the datanet, unless she missed her guess - but she already had enough access to start building false IDs for them.  It helped, she supposed, that the corprats were already scrambling to deal with a major crisis.  People were being moved around so rapidly that none of them really knew what was going on.

Good, she thought.  We can use that.

Phelps brushed his helmet against hers.  “Can we get in?”

“Yes,” Rachel assured him.  She’d done it before under far more challenging circumstances.  She might not be able to create completely new cover identities, but she could hijack a handful and put them to work.  “Just give me a few hours to put together the fake ID codes.”

“Hurry,” Phelps advised.  “We can’t hang out here forever.”

Chapter Nine

Instead, our lumberjack sells his trunk to the carpenter.  The carpenter pays ten credits for the trunk, therefore turning the lumberjack’s potential wealth into actual wealth, thus allowing the lumberjack to buy whatever he wants to buy.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

Julia felt ... awful.

Her minders - she tried not to think of them as guards or prison wardens - had allowed her to shower, then subjected her to a long series of security procedures that were designed to ensure she posed no threat, humiliate her or both.  They’d gone over everything in cynical detail, pressing sensors against her skull to monitor her brainwaves and then inserting smaller probes into each and every of her orifices.  She’d expected to be asked questions, not poked and prodded like ... a piece of meat.  She felt sick and violated by the time the ordeal was finished, with the minders throwing a shipsuit at her and ordering her to dress before she faced the next challenge.  Julia was tempted to plead for food and a nap, even for a simple nutrient drink, but she had enough dignity to keep her mouth shut.  If they couldn’t tell she was hungry, their medical probes needed work.

They escorted her into a dark room and pushed her into the exact centre, then ordered her to wait.  Julia knew what was coming, but it was still a shock when beams of bright light flared around her.  The chamber was designed to intimidate, to leave her feeling naked, alone and facing a handful of shadowy questioners.  She knew the procedure, but she’d never faced it before.  Not like this.  She wondered, not for the first time, if she’d made a terrible mistake in returning home.  Someone had to be the scapegoat.  Someone ... that someone was probably her.

“Julia Ganister-Onge,” a voice said.  It was completely atonal.  It could have come from any of the figures or none of them.  Hell, some of the figures might be nothing more than holographic illusions.  She knew better than to touch them.  “Your report is neither complete nor conclusive.”

Julia said nothing.  They were trying to unsettle her.  She knew the drill as well as they did.  They’d fire charges at her, in hopes of getting her to say something they could use against her.  Clearly, her status within the family was in doubt.  They wouldn’t have treated her so badly if they’d considered her a full member, with full voting rights.  And yet, they’d addressed her by her full name.

“You were sent to restore order on Hameau,” the voice said.  “What happened?”

“We lost,” Julia said, bluntly.  They’d had hours to read her report, along with whatever Captain Arbroath had submitted.  They knew what had happened.  “We were defeated by the marines.”

There was a long chilling pause before the voice spoke again.  “Why?”

Julia took a breath, then started to go through the whole story.  The arrival at Hameau.  The first engagement with the enemy fleet.  The landings.  The ground engagements, against both the marines themselves and the local insurgents.  The final desperate push against the marine positions, broken by a tidal wave of water; the engagement with the enemy fleet, ended by boarding parties storming the battlecruiser and her escorts.  And the surrender ... her surrender.  She felt her heart sink as she finished outlining the story.  She should never have headed home.  Someone else could have reported to the family.  She should have stayed on Hameau and hoped for the best.

“And you decided to come home,” the voice said.  “Why?”

“Because someone had to report,” Julia said.  She put as much lipstick on a pig as she could.  “I had to make sure you knew what had happened.”

The voice said nothing.  Julia couldn’t keep herself from peering into the darkness, even though she knew she wouldn’t see anything.  The holograms wouldn’t offer any more detail than a vague report from a subordinate hoping desperately his boss wouldn’t look too closely and see the problems ... she winced, inwardly.  She was too close to that mindset for her peace of mind.  Not that it mattered.  She was in deep shit.  The odds of her being allowed to retire gracefully were terrifyingly low.

She kept her voice under tight control as the voice threw question after question at her, often forcing her to repeat herself.  She tried to hide her growing tiredness - and fear and frustration - as they went over the same points time and time again, perhaps in hopes of catching her in a lie.  They wouldn’t want to believe, she knew.  They’d sooner believe Admiral Agate had turned traitor and set off to carve out an empire of his own than accept they’d lost to an outside power.  A few weeks ago, the shadowy men facing her had known they were the heirs of empire.  Now ...

“The invaders claimed to be the Terran Marine Corps,” the voice said.  “Do you believe they were telling the truth?”

“Admiral Agate believed so,” Julia said, carefully.  She wouldn’t know a marine from a civil or corporate guardsman.  “I have no reason to doubt him.”

“And yet he could be wrong,” the voice said.  “Or lying.”

“I have no reason to doubt him,” Julia repeated.  She felt her voice start to crack.  “And, whoever they are, they won.”

“Yes.”  There was another pause.  “Did they give you any hint of their future plans?”

“No,” Julia said.  “They did hint they might be open to discussions, but ... nothing too concrete.”

“Understood,” the voice said.  “We will have more questions for you later.  Until then, you can get some rest.  We’ll bring you down to the planet shortly.”

“Yes, sir,” Julia said, relieved.  She wondered, again, who was hiding behind the holographic masks.  Her father?  Her uncle?  A relative she’d never met?  It was possible.  “I ... I thank you.”

The holographic images vanished.  The lights came on.  Julia heard the hatch opening behind her and turned as the minders entered.  This time, she was almost pleased to see them.

***

Director Thaddeus Onge watched through a small array of sensors as Julia Ganister-Onge was escorted out of the interrogation chamber and down the corridor to a luxury suite that doubled as a holding cell.  Julia had no way to know it, but her body had been under constant monitoring from the moment she’d been transferred to the anchor station.  The slightest hint she’d told a lie would have set off alarms right across the system, providing more than enough excuse to subject her to an even more thorough interrogation.  She hadn’t shown any hint she was lying, although it had been clear she wasn’t sure of a few things.   Thaddeus didn’t blame her.  Indeed, it was a good thing.  If she’d been trying to construct a false narrative, one based on a misinterpretation of the truth, there would have been fewer holes in her story.

“It is impossible,” Vice Director Hayden James McManus said.  “The marines are a small military force.  They couldn’t invade and occupy an entire planet!”

“They have.”  General Gilbert spoke quietly, but firmly.  “There’s no way to avoid the simple fact that that’s exactly what they’ve done.”

Thaddeus looked at Gilbert’s holoimage.  “I take it there’s been no time to interrogate the others yet?”

“No, sir,” Gilbert said.  “We’re still unloading the transport and providing urgent medical care.  However, we have had time to scan their reports and compare them.  There’s a lot of ass-covering in places, I think, but the general gist is pretty much identical.  The marines came, saw and conquered.  And then they defeated Admiral Agate and captured most of his fleet.”

“Through a deep-space boarding action,” Thaddeus said.  “Why didn’t Admiral Agate see it coming?”

“Unknown, sir,” Gilbert said.  “The later interrogations might shed some light on the question, but right now ... sir, we have to assume the worst.”

“They hinted they might be interested in peaceful discussions,” Vice Director Vincent Adamson said.  “The galaxy is big enough for both of us.”

“Diplomacy is another word for playing nice and making honeyed promises while you assemble a big stick,” General Gilbert said.  “We don’t know how much war materiel the marines have hidden away, but can it match us?”

Thaddeus made a face.  He knew just how many trillions of credits had been invested in settling a cluster of star systems and secretly developing them into first-rank worlds without setting alarm bells ringing right across the empire.  He knew just how many ships he’d dispatched to collect trained personnel, willing or not, and bring them to the cluster, trading safety for service.  The marines had a small fleet - as far as the official records were concerned - and they clearly had more ships that had never been officially registered, but ... how many?  He couldn’t imagine it was that many.  The Terran Marine Corps had always been short of manpower.

But they might have kept half their manpower off the books too, he thought.  His lips curved into a faint smile.  Someone should lodge an official complaint.

He put the thought aside and leaned forward.  “General, what do you think they’ll do?”

“I think they’ll come here, as soon as they feel they can win,” Gilbert said.  “They may not know it, but they have a window of opportunity right now.”

Thaddeus grimaced.  Two-thirds of the navy was on collection duty.  Half of the remainder had been dispatched with Admiral Agate and was now either destroyed or in enemy hands.  It wasn’t clear if the captured ships were still usable - the reports had been vague on that point - but Gilbert was right.  They had to assume the worst.  Onge was armed to the teeth, with powerful orbital and ground-based defences, but there was no way they could take the offensive again until the remainder of the navy returned.  He cursed the irony under his breath.  The steps they’d taken to safeguard their worlds, the seed of a new empire, might have weakened them instead.

“Do they know?”  McManus seemed unimpressed.  “They can hardly count on us exposing ourselves.”

“They will have interrogated the prisoners,” Adamson said, quietly.  “Admiral Agate would certainly have had something to offer.”

“Traitor,” McManus growled.

“He might not have been given a choice,” Gilbert pointed out.  “There are plenty of ways to extract information from an unwilling donor.”

“He was supposed to be immune to them,” McManus said.  “Or was I misinformed?”

Thaddeus held up a hand.  “Right now, we have to assume the worst,” he said, nodding to Gilbert.  “In the short term, the marines can do a great deal of damage to us.  In the long term, we should have the edge.”

“If we can find their base,” Gilbert said.  “It could be anywhere.”

McManus glared.  “Surely it can be found ...”

“There are billions of stars within the galaxy,” Gilbert said, dryly.  “There’s a very good chance the marines established a major base outside the Core Worlds themselves.  We’d have, at best, millions of possible star systems to search.  We could reduce the number of possible targets by making assumptions about what sort of world they’d choose, but if one of those assumptions turned out to be wrong ...”

Thaddeus considered it while Gilbert and McManus exchanged sharp remarks.  The empire was immense.  Had been immense, he corrected himself.  There’d been hundreds of known and unknown colonies beyond the rim, beyond the edge of formally explored, claimed and settled space.  And yet, he doubted the marines would want to go that far from the Core Worlds.  They’d have to invest in infrastructure, if nothing else.  The costs would skyrocket to the point no black budget could hope to hide them.  And yet ... was that actually true?  Costs were high because the bigger corporations hadn’t had any interest in finding ways to lower them.   Thaddeus had seen the reports.  Given time, and a small degree of investment, isolated worlds could catch up at speed ...

They’ll want to be close to the political centre of empire, he reminded himself.  And that means their base has to be somewhere near the core.

“Right now, we concentrate our fleet and stall for time,” he said.  “How long until they can take the offensive?”

“Unknown,” Gilbert said.  “However, I doubt they can take the offensive very quickly.  They would need to maintain a garrison on Hameau, replace whatever men and materiel they lost during the fighting ... they may even be unsure where to go.”

“They sent their prisoners back here,” McManus snapped.

“Yes,” Gilbert agreed.  “But is this world, which is listed as a relatively minor colony world, the core of our operations?  Or is it just another Hameau?” 

“Admiral Agate could answer that question,” Thaddeus pointed out.  “We concentrate the fleet.  We prepare our defences.  We send out diplomatic missions and say nice doggy a lot, while we gather our forces and scout out their positions.  If nothing else, we can raise the spectre of launching another invasion of Hameau ... or even scorching the entire planet.”

“There are steps we can take to strengthen our defences here,” Gilbert said.  “We need to start bringing more and more of the newcomers into the planetary defence network.”

“They’re not indoctrinated,” McManus objected.  “They might be more loyal to the empire ...”

Thaddeus raised his eyebrows.  “What empire?”

McManus scowled.  “Sir, with all due respect, we would be better relying on men who’ve served us for decades.”

“Most of whom are on the fleet,” Gilbert said, quietly.  “We don’t know if we can trust the ones who returned home.”

“No.”  Thaddeus rubbed his forehead.  “Do you think they’ve been conditioned?”

“We tested Julia Ganister-Onge thoroughly,” Gilbert said.  “There should have been some sign if she’d been conditioned.  It would have had to have been a rush job, one that would have left scars on her mentality ... scars we could detect when we monitored the activity within her brain.  She could have agreed to serve them willingly, which wouldn’t have left any telltales for us to see, but I don’t think so.  We certainly didn’t catch her in a lie.”

“No,” Thaddeus agreed.  “Let her rest, then have her shipped down to my estate.  She can offer her insights, if she wishes to regain her former post.”

“If you think she can be trusted,” McManus growled.  “Is she good for anything?”

“I do need a new aide,” Gilbert offered.

Thaddeus laughed.  “Find your own,” he said.  “I need her on the surface.”

“Yes, sir,” Gilbert said.

“This is a challenge,” Thaddeus said, addressing the entire group.  “We knew there would come a time when we’d face a peer power, a force that would challenge us.  We didn’t expect it to happen so soon, but it did.  We need to handle it quickly and decisively and I have faith we can and we will.  Any final issues?”

“Just one,” Adamson said.  “What do we tell the people?”

“Nothing, not yet,” Thaddeus said.  “And make it clear to your staff that anyone who leaks anything, even the slightest hint, is going to be unceremoniously fired.”

Out an airlock, his thoughts added, silently.  Or perhaps straight into the sun.

“Yes, sir,” Adamson said.

***

Rachel felt her heart starting to pound as she opened the airlock, her implants telling the local processors a string of comforting lies.  The locals actually implanted their people with trackers, as if they were condemned criminals ... she shuddered, feeling sick even as her implants started to put out the same signal.  Earth had tried a similar system, but it had never gotten off the ground.  The logistics of implanting everyone from birth had been completely unmanageable.  Here ... the corprats seemed to have managed.  She put her disgust out of her mind as she inched into the airlock, knowing she was on the verge of complete success or utter defeat.  If she’d missed something, the airlock would seal itself until a security team arrived to investigate.

She breathed a sigh of relief as the outer hatch closed behind her, the inner hatch opening a moment later.  The corridor in front of her was empty.  The anchor station’s sensors had sworn blind the entire section was deserted, but Rachel hadn’t been too impressed.  If she could hack the system from the outside, someone on the inside could presumably do a much better job.  She’d been through enough transit stations to know they were infested with smugglers, criminals and even terrorist supporters.  It was astonishing how few people realised they’d be first against the wall when the revolution came until it was too late and they found themselves against the wall.

The airlock cycled again.  Phelps stepped out, his armoured suit looking faintly out of place.  Rachel waited for the others, then led them down the corridor and into a deserted living suite.  There’d be time to get undressed, wipe themselves down and blend into the station’s population while she put together more complete IDs.  They shouldn’t attract any attention, as long as they didn’t do anything suspicious.  The automated systems would think they were authorised to be onboard and do nothing.

“I stink,” Bonkowski said, as he removed his armour.  “Next time, can we try to sneak onto a resort world?”

“You’d be bored within a day,” Phelps said, removing his helm.  His face looked pale and sweaty.  “Rachel?”

“I’m just poking holes in the system,” Rachel said.  Like all large networks, the enemy system seemed to assume that anyone who got through the airlocks was authorised to be there.  As long as it didn’t kick a query up to a living human, it should be fine.  “Give me a couple of moments.”

“And then we get to work,” Perkins said.  He struck a dramatic pose.  “Do I look ready?”

“You look like a complete asshole,” Bonkowski said.  “Perfect!”

“It’s the uniform,” Perkins said.  “Why do they make their people dress like this?”

“Because anyone who doesn’t stands out,” Rachel said.  She could see the logic.  She could also see the glaring hole in the enemy defences.  “Shall we get to work?”

Phelps grinned.  “Yep.” 

Chapter Ten

The carpenter then puts his skills to work on the trunk, cutting away the branches and bark and sawing whatever is left of the wood into long planks.  This does not reduce the value of the wood.  Instead, it increases it.  The planks themselves may be worth around one hundred credits, even though they’re smaller than the original trunk.  The debris, too, may be worth something as firewood.
- Professor Leo Caesius, The Rise and Fall of Interstellar Capitalism

In space, Kerri reminded herself, no one can hear you scream.

It was a cliché so old, it predated spaceflight by decades, a cliché so old that few people knew where it had originally come from.  She wouldn’t have known, if she hadn’t gone through a training simulation based on one of the remakes of the ancient flick.  It was plain common sense - sound didn’t travel in space - and yet hardly anyone believed it.  She could have held a keg party on the bridge and none of the enemy sensors would have heard a thing, yet her crew would have been horrified if she tried.  They spoke in hushed voices, when they spoke at all.  The slightest sound made them jump.

Kerri smiled, although there was little real humour in the thought.  A jumpy crewman might bring the active sensors online if he got a fright, revealing their presence to every sensor within the system.  Or ... her imagination provided too many possibilities, each one more worrying than the last.  The system steadily unfolding in front of her, revealing its secrets one by one, was an order of magnitude more industrialised - and defended - than Hameau.  Onge itself was far too close to first-rank status for her peace of mind.

She leaned forward as more and more data flowed into the display.  The planet was heavily defended, with everything from orbital battlestations to hundreds of automated defence and sensor platforms.  The giant anchor stations were probably armed too, along with the asteroid habitats.  There were surprisingly few starships within sensor range - she’d expected an entire fleet to back up the fixed defences - but the locals clearly thought they didn’t need mobile fleets.  They might be right, she acknowledged sourly; it was hard to get a solid look at the planet from so far away, but her optical sensors had already picked out a handful of planetary defence centres as well as towering megacities.  The locals might well assume they didn’t need the fleet to see off anything smaller than the Imperial Navy.

Which no longer exists, she mused.  They may not even realise we’re coming at them.

She shook her head.  The enemy commanders knew what had happened to Hameau.  They’d start interrogating the returned POWs immediately, then decide to do ... what?  She didn’t know.   It defied belief that the ships she could see - and the ones that had been lost at Hameau - represented the entire enemy fleet.  A corporation with a dozen major shipyards under its control could easily put together a much larger force, even if they’d had to keep it off the books.  And yet ... she remembered just how many shipyards had been destroyed, or seized by warlords, in the months since Earthfall.  It was quite possible the corprats couldn’t rely on anything outside their small cluster of colony worlds.

Her eyes narrowed as her stealthed probes fanned out across the system.  There were a surprising number of asteroid mining stations, some apparently independent ... although not that independent.  The corprats would have enough monopolies on everything from fresh food to interstellar shipping that they’d be able to keep the rest of the system in a vise, if one that wasn’t very obvious as long as they didn’t put pressure on it.  Kerri doubted the asteroid miners had any illusions about how dependent they really were.  Spacers couldn’t afford to let themselves believe in illusions.  Everything had to be solid, or the weak links would get people killed.  She’d dated a RockRat once.  She knew how they thought.

“Captain,” Lieutenant Kiang said.  Her voice nearly made Kerri jump.  “I’ve prepared some projections on industrial output.”

“Good,” Kerri said.  “Let me see them.”

She keyed her console, bringing up the projections.  The planet seemed to have a surprising amount of industry on the ground, something odd for a world settled by a corporation.  They could easily have set up an entire halo of orbital industrials, if they’d had time.  Perhaps they’d planned a more gradual shift to space-based units or ... there were some advantages, she supposed, in remaining on the surface.  They already had a pair of space elevators.  It was unlikely they’d build an entire orbital tower, let alone four, but they didn’t need one.  They could send everything they needed to orbit via the elevator.

We could do something with that, she thought, before she caught herself.  She’d seen the videos of Earth’s orbital towers falling one by one, each one crashing with the force of a dozen asteroid strikes.  Or perhaps we should be careful not to take them out.

“Interesting,” she mused.  “What are they doing on the surface?”

“They may be trying to avoid a declaration of independence,” Kiang said.  She was young, but strikingly cynical.  “The asteroid colonies might let their personnel have a degree of freedom - too much freedom.  On the surface, social control would be a great deal easier.”

“True,” Kerri agreed.  The RockRats had been born from independence-minded asteroid settlers who’d realised, thousands of years ago, that they didn’t have to put up with orders from distant beancounters who manifestly didn’t have the slightest idea what was actually happening.  The immensity of space had ensured the RockRats simply outlasted the fools who’d thought they could be forced to work.  “Is it worth a little inefficiency to keep control?”

“I believe so,” Kiang said.  “The vast majority of their output could be churned out on a planetary surface.  There’d be no need to cross-train the workers or give them any hint they could rise higher.  I guess the really rebellious ones would be steered towards the army or simply given a one-way ticket towards the nearest penal colony.  It certainly matches what we were told by the POWs.”

Kerri shook her head in disbelief.  Haydn had insisted they were facing an alternate civilisation, rather than a mere corporate monstrosity, but she hadn’t really believed it ... not until now.  The corprats were condemning everyone, including themselves, to a living death and eventual bloody collapse.  By the time the end finally came, there would be no one with the experience to make a post-collapse society work.  Did the corprats think they had a solution?  Or were they foolishly convinced their plan was going to work?

She glanced at the communications console.  “Have we picked up anything from the Pathfinders?”

“No, Captain,” Ensign Susan Perkins said.  “We pinged the platform four hours ago.  There was no update.”

Kerri nodded, tartly.  There was a possibility - she’d known it from the moment she’d received her marching orders - that she might lose contact with the Pathfinders completely.  They might not be able to send a message to the platform ... hell, they might try to send a message, completely unaware it wasn’t reaching its destination.  They knew there wouldn’t be any acknowledgement.  If the enemy picked it up ...

She felt the hours slowly crawl by, one by one.  Their orders were to spend four days surveying the system, unless they had to leave early.  She wondered, grimly, if her subordinates had managed to get enough of Hammerblow’s systems back online to allow her to fly to the RV point, accompanied by the remainder of the captured ships.  It was a shame they couldn’t use her as a Trojan Horse to get into weapons range.  The enemy knew she’d been captured.  

And if they didn’t, she mused, they sure as hell know now.

Kerri stood.  “Commander, continue our survey,” she ordered.  “I’ll be in my ready room.”

***

If there was one advantage to the enemy state of alert, Rachel decided, it was that they were rushing officers and crew all over the system without any pause for thought or reconsideration.  The losses they’d suffered at Hameau had to have hurt worse than she’d thought.  They’d clearly not expected to have to deploy a mid-sized army across the interstellar void at a couple of weeks’ notice ... she admitted, rather sourly, that they’d done a remarkable job.  The marines could hardly have done better and their divisions were designed for hasty deployment.  Now, the cracks in the enemy personnel departments were starting to show.

“You have your records,” she said.  They’d spent the last few hours in a temporary suite, posing as crewmen waiting for their next assignment.  “Are there any questions?”

She smiled, grimly, as she recalled the facts and figures she’d forced herself to memorise.  Lieutenant Hannah Gresham would have been astonished to discover she hadn’t been assigned to the lost fleet after all ... Rachel had gone through the files very carefully, making sure there were few - if any - people who might have known Lieutenant Hannah Gresham before her departure and death.  She’d been on one of the enemy ships that had been destroyed in the final engagement, her presumed friends killed with her ... there was always the possibility of running into someone who knew her, but the risk was as low as possible.

“I think so,” Perkins said.  “Why did you take the prime job for yourself?”

“I’m a bitch.”  Rachel stuck out her tongue.  “And there weren’t that many places we could go.”

She smiled.  Lieutenant Hannah Gresham looked - had looked - a little like Rachel.  Not enough, perhaps, for Rachel to fool someone who’d known her well, but as long as she was spared that encounter, she would be safe enough.  The others hadn’t been so easy.  She hadn’t wanted to assign them to military units where they’d be the FNG and therefore carefully watched, or risk having them sent right across the system.  Their covers were slightly looser than hers.

“We can’t expect perfection,” Phelps said, shortly.  “Don’t fuck up.”

Rachel watched him and the others go, then breathed a silent prayer.  There were so many people coming and going that it was hard to believe they’d be noticed, but she wasn’t completely confident that she’d jiggered the records properly.  There were too many gaps in her knowledge of the enemy datanet for her peace of mind.  The defence systems were completely isolated from the rest of the network, unsurprisingly.  Hackers had caused so much damage, back on Old Earth, that only a fool would allow his weapons to be hooked up to an all-encompassing datanet.  She’d heard stories about hackers who’d triggered missiles in their launch tubes, but her instructors had insisted they were nothing more than stories.  It was hard to believe anyone would rig a system that would allow a hacker to do that.

Although there have been terrorists who blew themselves up while making bombs, she reminded herself.  And simple human laziness opens gaps for evildoers to do evil.

She glanced at herself in the mirror and let out a faint sigh.  Lieutenant Hannah Gresham looked pretty, in a butch sort of way.  The ill-fitting uniform looked faintly absurd.  Rachel would almost have preferred a uniform intended to show off her curves, such as they were.  In her experience, people preferred to stare at breasts rather than faces.  It irritated her to use such a simple trick, but if it worked ...

The timer bleeped.  She headed for the hatch, hoping and praying the lockers they’d stolen would remain undisturbed.  They’d fiddled with the records to make sure they were assigned to transient workers, and should therefore be left alone, but there was no way to be entirely certain.  Onge was a planet of sneaks, spies and government snoops.  She kept her face under tight control as she passed through a series of airlocks, her implants pinging the datanodes as she went along.  The shuttles were already arriving, their complements of personnel being directed towards the assembly point.  There’d be so many new faces mingled together that no one should notice one more.

She smiled as she joined the throng of junior officers and crewmen.  Some of them were clearly young, probably born on Onge and recruited directly into the Onge Navy.  Others, older and more experienced, were clearly ex-Imperial Navy.  Rachel studied them from behind her bland expression, wondering if there were ways to disrupt the smooth functioning of the enemy military.  In her experience, inter-service rivalry was a pain in the ass even when everyone had the same boss.  Now, after Earthfall, who knew where the chips would fall?  It was quite possible the locals would resent the newcomers and vice versa.

They followed a handful of senior officers into a giant auditorium, where tired-looking uniformed bureaucrats held out assignments.  Rachel braced herself, knowing that she was approaching the moment of truth.  If she’d made a mistake, if the beancounters hadn’t added Lieutenant Hannah Gresham to their list, she might have to try to fight her way out.  She didn’t dare let them take a good look at her.  The implants were designed to be difficult to detect, but difficult was not the same as impossible ...

“Lieutenant Hannah Gresham,” the officer said.  He held out a datachip.  “Report to Section-31G.  Immediately.”

“Yes, sir,” Rachel said.  

She allowed herself a moment of relief.  The hacking had worked.  The man hadn’t noticed anything wrong.  She felt a thrill of excitement as she turned and headed up the shaft towards the command core.  Someone had taken a look at her credentials and assigned her right where she wanted to be!  She’d done everything in her power to ensure she’d be assigned to the right place, but there’d been no guarantees.  The handful of officers she passed paid no attention to her.  She was too junior to be worthy of their interest.

The soldiers on guard outside the command core checked her ID twice before allowing her to proceed to her duty station.  Rachel found it irritating, although she was careful not to show it.  Alert guards meant trouble, even if there was nothing wrong with the legend she’d crafted around the dead lieutenant.  They might intervene if she started a gunfight in the middle of the command core ... if, of course, she had a gun.  She’d had to leave her weapons behind, in the locker.  The only people allowed weapons on the anchor station were senior officers and security guards.  She’d have to take one of their guns if she wanted to use it.

A middle-aged man blocked her way.  “You’re late,” he growled.  “What happened?”

Rachel pasted a cringing expression on her face.  “I had to find my way up here,” she stammered, trying to look like a mouse hiding from a hawk.  “I ... I’ve never been on a station like this before.”

She tried not to roll her eyes at his expression.  The deception irked her - she could kill him with a single blow - but it served a useful purpose.  He would never speak so rudely to Phelps, who looked big enough to snap the asshole in two effortlessly, yet he would never see him as harmless either.  It was enough to make her want to snort.  Very few people were completely harmless, even the ones who were so weak they couldn’t lift a hand to defend themselves.  She’d had to deal with the consequences of too many weak men who’d been pushed too far, or so they insisted, to have any sympathy for them.

“We’ll discuss it later,” the man said.  He spoke to her as if she were a young and particularly stupid child.  “I’m Commander Archer, your section CO.  You are checked out basic tactical duties, are you not?”

“Yes, sir,” Rachel said.  She judged she could let a little irritation slip into her voice.  The tactical systems were standardised, as far as she could tell.  The corprats hadn’t been interested in devising something new, not when half their recruits came from the Imperial Navy.  There would be no surprises, not here.  She might have problems on a pirate ship, where a dozen different systems would be spliced together, but not here.  “I have certifications in ...”

“I don’t care,” Commander Archer said.  He jabbed a finger at a console underneath a chair on a dais.  “That’s your station.  Familiarise yourself with the system before you go on duty.  You’ll be under my supervision until I say otherwise.  Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Rachel said.  The thought of his supervision made her skin want to crawl.  She had no trouble recognising the petty resentments of a man who’d been promoted past the limits of his competence, a man who knew he’d never be anything worth mentioning and intended to take it out on as many people as he could before he was finally discharged.  “I understand.”

He pushed her towards her seat, then stamped off to make someone else’s life miserable.  Rachel sat, activating the console while carefully glancing around the command core.  It was larger than she’d realised, an interlocking network of consoles, stations and chairs intended to remind everyone at the bottom that that was precisely where they were.  She thought she saw an officer she vaguely recognised at the top, from her younger days.  An Imperial Navy officer who’d taken the corprat shilling ...

Dumb bastard, she thought.  She turned her attention to the console and started to work.   She’d been ordered to familiarise herself with the system and that was precisely what she intended to do.  Her supervisor could hardly make a fuss if he caught her following orders.  There would be time to cause trouble later.  Anyone who places their faith in corprats is heading for a nasty fall.