Brent-Cochrane had been furious, although his fury hadn’t been as raging hot as Percival’s had been, when she’d been slapped or beaten by her superior. She could understand his position, for they’d been working on training the squadron, only to discover that most of the commanding officers were unsuited for their position. The Empire rarely gave superdreadnaughts to officers with imagination — they might have the imagination to use them in rebellion against the Empire — and Brent-Cochrane’s subordinates had the collective intelligence of a dead fish. She smiled at the thought; perhaps it was a little harsh. The collective intelligence of a dying scorpion, doomed, but still able to kill with its sting. If something happened to him, his subordinates would fight on, with all the intelligence and competence of a newly-minted cadet entering the Academy.
The Lieutenant paused outside the Admiral’s outer hatch and pressed his thumbprint against the scanner, opening the hatch and allowing them access. He stood aside, waving them through — it seemed that junior officers were still not allowed into the Admiral’s quarters — and closed the hatch behind them. Four Blackshirts, carrying stun batons and sensor needles, stepped forward and ran the needles over their bodies, looking for hidden surprises. Penny concealed her own surprise. Percival had to be feeling paranoid… or perhaps he was making another subtle insult, implying that he didn’t trust Brent-Cochrane not to harm him. Penny almost snorted at the thought. Brent-Cochrane’s plans for harming his superior officer, at least as far as she knew, didn’t include his physical murder.
“They’re clean,” the first Blackshirt reported. He was a burly man, with piggish eyes; indeed, Penny wondered if the training process had included shots of Gorilla DNA. His voice, a thick guttural sound, was an unmistakable mark, the results of the drugs that had been shot into the recruits when they entered the training camps. They ensured both obedience to lawful authority and unquestioning brutality to everyone else. “No bombs, no guns; only a single dress sword.”
“Then show them in,” an impatient voice snapped. Penny felt her heart skip a beat as Percival’s voice echoed through the compartment. “Now, if you please.”
Penny allowed Brent-Cochrane to precede her into Percival’s inner compartment, taking the additional few seconds to gather her thoughts. Percival had altered the décor slightly, moving the submissive blonde woman to a new place on the wall and replacing it with… she leaned forward, unable to believe her eyes. The new picture was one of a man being unceremoniously strangled by the hangman’s noose. She fought down the urge to vomit, trying to understand why Percival had placed it in such prominence, or why he would want to sleep under it. Or why, for that matter, he would expect her to sleep under it.
“They failed in their duty,” Percival said, without bothering with formalities. That might have been intended as yet another insult, but she suspected, from the angry tone of helpless fury in his voice, that it was simply an oversight. “They failed in their duty and, because of them, the whole Empire knows about the rebellion.”
That was physically impossible, but Penny decided that it would be better not to point that out to her enraged superior and lover. Brent-Cochrane didn’t have the same scruples, yet even he kept his mouth shut, watching and waiting to see which way Percival jumped. Being so close to him was like being close to a caged animal, one that could turn on her and rend her to pieces at any moment. The whole compartment seemed to be charged with negative energy.
“The rebels accessed the ICN,” Percival said, when he had calmed down enough to speak straight. “They managed to get a message into the buffers here — in this system — and upload it into the courier boats. They will have told all the other malcontents and dissidents and ungrateful populations about their rebellion and invited them to join up! The rebellion will spread far and wide.”
Penny kept her face composed, although she risked a glance at Brent-Cochrane and saw the — barely-hidden — look of cold calculation on his face. Percival’s real motive for keeping the news of the rebellion concealed had never been to avoid giving encouragement to the other rebels out there, but to save himself from the vengeance of an angry Empire. If he had managed to beat the rebels before the news got out, he would look like a hero, rather than the moron who managed to lose nine superdreadnaughts to a rebel commander with a grudge against him personally. The Empire would want his head and his connections, even if they risked defending him, would be unable to save his head from the chopping block.
“So the message is out and spreading,” Brent-Cochrane said, once Percival had finished explaining. Penny had to admire the tactic, even though it made her life much more dangerous. The message would be forever moving in advance of any message ordering the ICN to wipe it from the local nodes. Worse, even if they did manage to quarantine a few systems and prevent them from getting the message, it would still slip in through other starships in transit. “That may not be such a bad thing.”
Percival glared at him. Penny had a good idea that she knew what was going through his mind, but he wouldn’t explode in front of Brent-Cochrane, not when his subordinate would gleefully take it to his superiors.
“It is a disaster,” Percival said, flatly. “It is a disaster so great that I had the entire crew of the ICN station executed for dereliction of duty.” His voice became strident, hectoring. “We cannot allow any leeway when it comes to punishing traitors against the Empire!”
“That seems a little harsh,” Brent-Cochrane observed, mildly. “Do you want them to make a habit of opening sealed packets from Imperial Intelligence?”
“They failed,” Percival snapped. He clearly wasn’t open to rational thought. Someone had to pay the price for the embarrassment and humiliation the Empire had suffered, even if he had to drum up charges and execute them quickly before anyone else could intervene. “The entire Empire knows now!”
His face darkened before anyone else could speak. “And the rebels hit Piccadilly,” he added. “The Roosevelt Family is not happy.”
Penny felt an insane urge bubbling up within her and she indulged it. “I hardly see how we can be blamed for that,” she said. Piccadilly had been high on the list of possible targets she’d drawn up, although Stacy Roosevelt’s insistence that Greenland be protected had prevented her from having any pickets near the other Roosevelt world. Besides, it was the Roosevelt Family, not the Imperial Navy, that was responsible for defending Piccadilly. “We were not guarding that world.”
“The problem,” Percival said with an air of patience that fooled no one, “is that the rebels have managed to strike at the heart of the Roosevelt Family’s investments in this sector, which are vital for the continued economic growth of the Empire. Combined with their message, it sends a… disagreeable signal to the remainder of the Empire. The effects could be disastrous.”
“The rebels have to be stopped,” Brent-Cochrane said, with an air of artful nonchalance. “I fail to see why losing a single world is such a problem. There are thousands of other worlds in the Empire.”
Penny thought she knew. The Roosevelt Family had invested heavily in Sector 117, it was why they had so much influence, even to put Percival in as their choice for Sector Commander. And their senior representative in the Imperial Navy, Stacy Roosevelt, had been jumped ahead of more qualified officers and ordered to capture Jackson’s Folly and its daughter colonies — intact, with its industrial base undamaged.