by Blaze Ward
“I’m not sure I can wait a decade,” Tad suggested quietly.
“And that’s your ego talking, and not your wisdom, Tad,” Nils snapped. “You’re afraid that someone else will get the credit for your maneuver, aren’t you?”
Tad paused, carefully not grinding his teeth. This was why you had conspiracies in the morning, when the sunlight might shine on them and burn away all the stupid vanities and risks.
Like yes, moving too quickly and making an implacable enemy of the greatest naval commander alive.
“If we wait a decade, Casey might stabilize her reign,” Tad prophesied. “Might rebuild Fribourg in her image. Strengthen it to the point that we could not bring them down.”
“No,” Nils said. “You might not be able to shatter them into feuding principalities that you could stir up, like Lincolnshire frequently does to the outer bands of Corynthe. Your bribes to make a fuss might not work, and the Empire might survive. Why is that the worst possible outcome?”
Tad drew a breath to rebuke Nils, but caught the words unspoken.
Why was that the worst possible outcome?
“Because Fribourg was winning, Nils,” Tad finally admitted. “Given a chance, they have the mass and economies of scale to defeat us. This might be our only opportunity in the next generation to strike back.”
“Casey will be an entire generation at her task, Tad,” Nils leaned in again. “Decades, just bringing the rest of Fribourg to heel. And she will be trying to make them over into us as she goes. If you restart the war, even defensively, you will squander that opportunity. We could passively conquer Fribourg culturally, socially, perhaps even emotionally in that time. Is it worth the risk?”
“And they could overthrow her tomorrow, Nils,” Tad countered. “A few have tried, either actively in one case or passively in several others. The noble class is extremely restive.”
“So wait until one of them gets serious, Tad,” Nils said. “Or lucky. But make sure that it can never be traced back to you. Casey might understand matters of statecraft, but Jessica will never forgive you. You might succeed in breaking Fribourg apart, but what would it do to the Republic if it came to open war with Jessica? Have you considered that you might break Aquitaine as well? They see her as their hero. The one that saved the galaxy. How many people will side with her instead of you?”
Tad caught his gasp and considered the rightness in Nils’s words.
The waitress returned and took orders, interrupting the line of logic. After a few minutes, the emotions faded as well, both men watching the other silently, but at least he wasn’t wearing coffee. And didn’t need an icepack for his face.
Tad maneuvered the conversation onto less-fraught topics, happy to have not driven an impossible wedge between he and Nils. The man was retired, but that just meant that he had time on his hands and freedom to pursue his own conscience now.
And perhaps agitate for a Senatorial seat, such as the one his brother held. Not all of them were elected, as the Republic long ago recognized the need to have some members who sat above politics, or at least to one side, where their expertise in a topic or argument might lend weight and credence.
Tad could see Nils standing on the Senate floor, denouncing him in closed session, if it went wrong.
And perhaps, just perhaps, the man would be correct.
But this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and Tad would be a fool to pass it up.
Chapter X
Imperial Founding: 180/10/01. Fort Dawson, Osynth B’Udan
As Mondays went, Vo decided the one just rising was probably no better or worse than most. His office was a welcome respite from a week of sleeping rough, although he would never say that out loud.
An entire week in the field on maneuvers had tightened things up considerably with the men, after so much time in the Death Zone all winter, and then the messiness of transporting the entire legion from the interior to the front.
Of course, the men had gotten a little sloppy. But Vo had instructed the defending forces he faced to fight dirty. He had even called the Flag General in charge of Fort Dawson occasionally to leak secrets, just so his own men got used to attacking someone that fought back and seemed to know where their hard and soft spots were.
Getting embarrassed in training meant that you were less likely to get killed on the battlefield. And that was the next stop.
So he was in his office as the sun rose, reading the outcomes right now. The combined score for a full week in the field was respectable, he supposed. In the top quarter, over the last fifty years, but well short of what he thought it should be. At least they had pulled it together on Thursday and stopped getting ambushed so badly. The weekend had even shown him what this team was really capable of, when pushed.
So he let them sleep in today, while motor pool teams fixed the hardware and the cooks could fix the rest. He missed Melina and Thurman, but a battlefield was no place for their three young daughters, eleven to fourteen. The mess hall for Headquarters Ala that the woman had run with an iron fist, however, hadn’t forgotten anything, even without her there holding the reins.
He put down the current report and returned to the breakfast burrito that someone had delivered to his desk, along with coffee, just as he was leaving his cabin, like morning fairies. He was in the process of finishing the other half when Reese Borel knocked and opened the door.
“Just got word from on high, sir,” he said as he stuck his head in. “Frigate just made orbit with a messenger specifically for us. Probably be on the ground and here by dinner time.”
Vo nodded. The timing was about right. Hopefully, the man would have two messages, with one of them being that Fourth Patrol, Fourth Heavy Scout Ala, was ready to begin hard training, and would be shipping out here shortly. He was looking forward to adding Moirrey’s Winged Scouts to the mix.
Vo and Alan Katche had discussed a variety of options with Pyotr, Fourth Ala commander, but everyone agreed that they weren’t read to fully integrate that team yet.
Instead, Vo was hoping that the messenger was bringing orders for the rest of the Legion to load onto the Assault Carriers and move forward, so they could launch their first strike.
November Tenth was coming soon. Vo had no doubts that the various planetary Khans had been warned to expect something big on the first anniversary of the bombardment of St. Legier, but he wanted to wait. Not long. Perhaps a week later, so that those fine folks began to relax some, confident that their mortal enemy was apparently too weak to actually threaten them.
And then he wanted to burn some planet to the ground.
“Pulse a message to all the motor pool Decurions,” Vo said. “Tell them to either speed things up, or hold off on big tasks until tomorrow, when we’ll know more. Then let Alan and the other cohort commanders know. In fact, bump things around to put us all in a meeting mid-afternoon, so I’ll know where we’re at when the messenger arrives.”
“Will do, sir,” and he was gone.
Vo took another bite and opened the next report.
The messenger arrived with Tom Provst in tow, which Vo found an interesting addition. The rest of Provst’s Expeditionary Squadron had just arrived in orbit over the last few weeks, and had been drilling as hard in orbit as the 189th had been on the ground.
For the same reasons.
The delivery boy was a kid. A lieutenant just out of school with a formal-looking, soft-sided leather satchel slung over the shoulder of his uniform. Naval blue, but the kid looked more like a spy than a sailor, an opinion Vo kept to himself.
He apparently knew too many spies these days.
The event was a working dinner, so they added an extra leaf to the table and slid in a chair for their unexpected guest. Tom had obviously ordered everyone to remain silent about his accompanying the messenger, else Vo would have been told a count of bodies to expect, at the minimum.
But the kitchen had enough food on hand.
Vo looked around as they settled. The messenge
r on his immediate right, Reese Borel on his left. Alan, Omar, Dylan, Pyotr, and Alistair. Cohort Centurion Hermann Gerstenburger, commanding the entire HQ Ala, was a more recent addition, once Vo realized that there was too much work to do for him to command the five combat Alae in the field, and still keep up with everything Sixth required. With Provst on the far end, the room was a little crowded, but this way they didn’t have to yell at each other over the noise of the regular mess hall.
Imperial manners demanded that everyone eat first, so they did, bouncing operations questions off each other, and occasionally Tom Provst, but ignoring the messenger completely.
Finally, the stewards cleared things and delivered coffee. Brandy was occasionally an option, but Vo didn’t want people relaxing tonight.
“You have dispatches for us?” Vo turned to the young man.
He had already placed the satchel on the table in front of him and extracted two large, sealed envelopes, one of which went down the table to Provst. Both were heavy with paper.
Vo opened the packet and scanned the first two pages quickly, before handing everything to Alan to read.
“You got the same orders?” Vo found Tom Provst looking up with a sardonic grin on his face.
Tom hadn’t smiled much over the last year. Possibly as little as Vo did, so seeing this was almost out of place.
“Kick in the door and guard it,” Provst said. “While you and yours rob the joint. Then drive the getaway car.”
Vo doubted that Imperial Movement Orders actually ever read anything like that, but he could see that interpretation. He had spent enough time around Tom.
Rendezvous with the First Centurion, now that Provst’s battle squadron was complete. Sail out and hit one of five targets, to be determined by forward intelligence unknown back at Headquarters. Teach the followers of Buran that they had made a terrible mistake and that anything was better than compounding it.
Or, as Tom would likely say: kill them all, and make God sort them out.
“What verbal orders did you have?” Vo turned to the man, and he realized that the messenger had gone a little white. “Everyone here is cleared for anything you have.”
“This one was for you, specifically, General,” the man said a touch nervously. “Delivered into my hands by the Grand Admiral to be placed in yours.”
He extracted a much smaller thing now, a flat bag about the size of Vo’s hand, that Vo took and weighed.
He opened it and pulled out a piece of cloth folded up inside. It was crimson. With the Imperial crest: Gold Eagle Elevated and Displayed. By size, it just happened to be perfect to hang from the flag antenna on Cutlass Ten, his command skiff, where the breeze would pull it taut as the vehicle moved.
Vo kept the sourness off his face. zu Wachturm might have handed it to the kid, but it hadn’t been the Grand Admiral’s idea. Nor the Grand Marshal’s.
Casey, sending her personal flag for him to wear into battle, as a blessing. Like she had promised to do. He almost felt like one of the knights of the round table.
“Reese,” Vo said, handing the flag to the man on his other side. “See that Iakov Street gets this. He’ll know what to do.”
The room had fallen awkwardly silent around them. Barracks rumors had made suggestions, but Vo had ignored questions from everyone except Alan, who he could trust to keep his mouth shut, even if he had a tendency to walk off with coffee mugs accidentally.
Vo scanned the entire room once, before settling back on Tom Provst. He had spent the afternoon with most of these men, so they knew the state of things.
“In eighty-four hours, Friday morning local time, we will begin loading DropShips,” Vo said firmly. “Departure will follow in ninety-six hours, or I will want to know who needs to be fired. Questions?”
“Pack everything, or do we have a specific climate to prepare for?” Alan asked.
It was a damned good question. Vo didn’t have an answer.
He would need Jessica for that.
“Pack everything,” he decided. “Maybe we’ll hit more than one target before we return to barracks.”
There was no reason to only share his wrath with one planet. He had more than enough to go around.
Chapter XI
Date of the Republic September 15, 402 IFV Vanguard, Forward Base Delta
On the screen, it looked like her big battle squadron always had, until you got close and counted noses. They had lost CS-405, and never heard from them again, but Jessica still held out hope that Kosnett had just had to take his time getting home, rather than being captured and disappearing forever into the darkness of Buran.
CP-406 and Duncan were off looking for French Mainforcers to ambush, deep in the Spanish interior, the origin of the word guerilla: fighters in Wellington’s Peninsular war.
With RAN Arad, she had two carriers now. The three corvettes that had accompanied Arad put her one above her old strength and let Jessica organize things into wings, rather than throwing everyone into a rush. Arad and II Augusta could sit off in one corner and launch remote strikes from a great distance, or they could follow in to a close drop, only a few light-minutes out, and unload everything, meeting them on the far side without having to take fire. Ballard could wait with them, or do combat, depending on the defenses they encountered.
One more way to confuse Buran’s Directors.
Two Assault Corvettes could escort the three line warships, Vanguard, VI Ferrata, and VI Victrix, while the others could sit on wings defensively and shoot anything hostile that moved. Coming out of jump hot, she could either drop the full flight wing as an introduction: fourteen GunShips and twelve Fast Strike Bombers; or just have everyone come out at once and go for mass chaos.
Jessica looked down from the display and caught Enej’s eye as she keyed the command channel, bringing everyone into a virtual room to listen.
“Enej, you have the flag,” she said crisply.
He blinked briefly and then smiled.
Enej Zivkovic didn’t get to do this very often. Most of the time, he was relaying messages up and down the chain as she adjusted fights. He would never be a combat commander, like Robbie, Alber’, or Kigali, but she wouldn’t have gotten here without his calm competence doing the little things.
“All vessels, this is Enej Zivkovic, aboard Vanguard. I have the flag,” he said, head coming up just a little and chin jutting out. “Everyone conform to Vanguard, and ahead standard acceleration. See you at Waypoint Glory.”
Jessica smiled at him. The raids were going to get more serious now. Either Buran started defending some of the mid-sized systems deep behind the old lines with better forces, or she might send out small teams to just harass the shit out of things around here. Buran didn’t have to fight her, but she would do an unbelievable amount of damage to this sector’s economy and morale if he didn’t.
She couldn’t capture anyplace, not like Thuringwell, and both Ninagirsu and Severnaya Zemlya were too well-defended for her to fight a pitched battle on her terms, but she could certainly go after most of the rest. At some point, the Lord of Winter would have to fight her, or watch as her forces went and did the same things to the Lena Sector.
And then, who knows?
IFV Vanguard pointed her nose deep into the interior of The Holding, and vanished into JumpSpace.
Chapter XII
Date of the Republic October 06, 402 IFV Vanguard, Edge of the Nents System
In some ways, it was like the old days with First War Fleet as Jessica watched updated scans from Ballard come in. Everyone was at battle stations on all ships, just waiting for the word.
She had the overhead lights in her flag bridge turned down, just a little, a suggestion from the folks on Ballard as to help everyone think sneaky.
Thief in the night.
In the old days, they had known the names of the systems they wanted to probe and had some feel for the economy and culture before they arrived.
Some Dukes scrimped on defenses, relying on the Fribourg Fle
et to maintain enough firepower in-system to prevent serious raids. Others went all in, maintaining what could be technically interpreted as private navies, although always with the tacit approval of the throne.
There were always hard cases that would risk getting carried away if they had access to that level of manpower. Especially today.
But this was Buran. There were no private militias. Until the last few years, the war had been so far removed from their lives that many systems only had a few basic defenses, things like armed stations with a couple of big guns and maybe a bunch of missiles that could be used to chase off any pirates that wandered this way accidentally.
That was changing, but not nearly fast enough, as they had to build everywhere at once, and Jessica could strike wherever her scouts found a soft spot.
Like Nents.
It was a relatively unimportant system, but Seeker had, they discovered, a near-eidetic memory for planets he had studied, so nearly every inhabited system in Altai or Lena sectors had a name now, and not just an alphanumeric designation.
Its importance lie in the fact that it happened to join several trade routes together, like a convenience store out on the highway, or an old-fashioned inn and pub for travelers. Just a village on the edge of a swamp, if you would.
But someone, sometime in the past, had decided to make money with orbital warehousing, and had put twenty-three major facilities in orbit, most of them just massive, squat cylinders where a freighter could dock and unload big containers in one of several standard sizes.
Big, hollow donuts, filled with cream, waiting.
