Shaking his head, he turned back to the report from Flag Captain Jeremy Damiani, who had been doing his own checks on the other side of the superdreadnaught. Colin knew that he had stepped on the man’s toes mercilessly, but he knew that there wasn’t any choice — and besides, he needed to be intimately familiar with the superdreadnaught. Damiani hadn’t been allowed to clean out the problems on his own ship — Stacy Roosevelt had refused him permission to do anything of the sort, although Colin had no idea why — and he had been horrified by what he’d found. Colin had been more pragmatic, if only because he’d seen worse. There were starships in the Imperial Navy that were not, in truth, commanded by their Captains.
He placed the datapad aside and stared up at the tactical star chart glowing in front of him. On the way back from Piccadilly, they’d hit two smaller worlds, wiping out a pair of Imperial Navy facilities in one and looting the other, where Percival had created a small resupply base for his ships. Colin had wondered if it had been a trap — it was odd for Percival to show so much forethought — so he’d gone in carefully, only to loot the station and flicker out — as far as he could tell — without any pursuit. If someone drew the three points he’d attacked on a star chart, they’d see them running in a line towards the Rim, but not towards the parts of the Rim that were part of the Popular Front. It might waste some of Percival’s time and resources.
Colin grinned to himself. As far as he could tell, Percival’s only hope was that Colin would expose himself, allowing one or both of Percival’s superdreadnaught squadrons the chance to intercept him and break his force. Percival was doubtless already trying to search the Rim for his base — or his supporting elements — but that would be a thankless task. The Rim and the Beyond was vast, with hundreds of hidden colonies; Percival would have some problems tracking down and locating the right one. The prospect of betrayal was far more serious, but Colin had taken ample precautions. The vast majority of the Rim’s citizens had no idea where he was based and Colin intended for it to stay that way.
And then there was the message. Hester had written the basic message, and then Colin and Daria had worked on it, refining their statement to the Empire. It had been calculated to inspire potential rebels all across the Empire, but at the same time to discourage futile uprisings. And, hopefully, it would give Percival heart failure. Colin suspected that news of the rebellion was already going to Earth, regardless of what Percival had ordered, yet… would they replace him with someone more competent? He shook his head. It didn’t really matter. It would take just under six months for his message to get to Earth and another six months for any new orders to reach Percival. By then, Colin would either have defeated Percival or died in an expanding ball of radioactive plasma.
His intercom buzzed. “Sir, this is Private Willis,” a voice said. “We have moved Nix to his new quarters.”
“Thank you, Marine,” Colin said. Nix would get a second chance, although one in which he would be supervised for the rest of a very short and uncomfortable career. Colin intended to beach him when he had the chance. “You can report back to your duty stations now.”
Grinning, he turned back to his notes.
“And what,” Neil demanded, “do you call that?”
He glared at the new recruits, who looked nervously back at him. They had no formal military training at all, not even the quick and dirty training given to the Blackshirts. What they did have was a willingness to fight and die for their homes, the colonies along the Rim. Some of them were experienced fighters, yet they had never been properly trained. The difference was only unimportant to someone who had never served and Neil had been a Marine for over thirty years.
“You are not taking part in a dance,” he snapped, casting a jaundiced eye over the recruits. “This training is supposed to teach you how to be precise! You stand straight when at attention, do you understand? And when I tell you to about-face, I want to hear you cry out when your fucking tool gets caught in your pants!”
He shook his head as the recruits looked miserable. They’d signed up without truly understanding the machine they’d joined, the Marine Corps; not as it was, but as it would be. Neil rather thought that his old Drill Sergeants would have approved, although they would probably be trying to kill him, if he ever saw them again.
“Fifty push-ups,” he added. “Drop and give them to me now!”
He concealed a smile as the recruits dropped and started to do push-ups. They’d thought that doing fifty was bad, the first time around… and then he’d shown them that he could do over five hundred, while only using one hand. It had impressed them more than most of them had wanted to admit.
They weren’t bad kids, he admitted, in the privacy of his own head. A little rough, a little unresponsive to discipline, but the Marine Corps had taken worse and converted them into the finest Marines in the Empire. Or even outside it. The Marine Corps had been his family, one that had been shamed when they had been ordered to carry out a massacre. He would redeem it, whatever it took.
He caught sight of a small skinny guy, struggling with the final push-ups. The young man had the heart, all right; the only question was if he’d last long enough to grow the body. Neil knew what the Marine Corps meant, even if the new recruits didn’t; war. War meant fighting and fighting meant killing. And deaths, friendly deaths. The Empire liked to conserve its Marines, although the blackshirts were regarded as expendable, yet… there were always deaths. There were times that he wished he’d been killed in the moment of his greatest victory, when he’d taken the superdreadnaughts for the rebellion. And yet he had lived.
Neil looked out over the sweating backs of the young men and women and wondered, despite himself, which one would be the first to die.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Welcome to Sanctuary,” Cordova announced, as they stepped off the shuttle and into a massive rocky hanger deck. Unlike visiting an Imperial Navy starship, or a private firm, there was no welcoming party to greet them. “What do you think of the place?”
Hannelore looked around her, but it was nothing special, not unlike the habitats she had visited and intended to create at Tyler’s Star. There seemed to be no security, apart from a single flight controller, and nothing barring the way into the heart of the asteroid. She couldn’t see any safety systems, but she found herself hoping desperately that they were there. A space habitat was not always a safe place to live.
She’d actually enjoyed the two weeks she’d spent on the Random Numbers. Cordova had been the perfect gentleman, encouraging her to talk about her own life and asking insightful questions about the High City on Earth, even some that suggested that he had some insider knowledge of the place. In return, he’d told her about the Popular Front, about hundreds of rebel and insurgent groups working together to force the Empire to reform, or destroy it. Despite herself, Hannelore had found herself horribly intrigued and fascinated. Could it be that the Empire could be reformed, rather than destroyed? She’d known, of course, just how badly the system was rigged. The Roosevelt Family might even have managed to take the whole Tyler’s Star project off her hands and give it to one of their allies. She’d kept it as quiet as she could in hopes of avoiding their interest.