Winterhome

by Blaze Ward

“Are you doing okay?” she asked simply, taking the right hand seat across the desk from Vo, and letting Katche take the left.

  Vo shrugged, almost characteristically.

  “I have a job to do,” he offered. “You’re helping me get it done.”

  “That wasn’t what I asked, Vo,” she said pointedly.

  She was rewarded by Vo’s quick glance at Katche, almost guiltily.

  “Tell her,” the Primus Pilus said simply. “Better she hear it from you.”

  Vo blew out an enormous breath and fixed her with those hazel eyes, suddenly filled with a greater depth of pain than she could even remember in the mirror. This was not the Vo Arlo she had sent to Ballard with Moirrey, so many years ago.

  Nor the zu Arlo that had accompanied Emmerich to St. Legier, to build this new thing, this legion.

  She wasn’t even sure he was still human, from the way he silently eyed her for several moments. Moirrey occasionally referred to him as the Mountain of Doom.

  “Before we left, some things happened,” he began in a deep, slow tone. “Things that changed how I approach my mission.”

  She leaned back enough to let the chair hold her weight, letting him find his own pace. Vo was a storyteller when he wanted to be, like so many other things he did well.

  “After we had done about as much as we could to rescue the folks in and around the Death Zone,” he continued. “Digger showed up, bringing Archangel and Akatsuki, plus a Palatine Count in Judit Chavarría. Having access to assault carriers made my life much better, and brought forward all of our time tables by nine to twelve months at a minimum.”

  “But?” she prompted when Vo fell into himself.

  She had seen him do that. Close up his emotions, like the door on the refrigerator shutting and turning off the light, plunging the chamber into sudden darkness.

  “I had a meeting with the Emperor,” Vo finally said, after another gap. “With Casey.”

  Casey?

  Jessica couldn’t imagine someone like Vo ever calling her Casey. Lady Casey, perhaps. Or Princess. Most likely just Centurion, in Vo’s case.

  Not Casey.

  She waited, aware that Vo needed to do this at his own pace.

  People had often thought that then-Yeoman Arlo was a little dense, because he did everything with calm, studied deliberation. Jessica had never been fooled.

  “She had to bless this mission, you see?” Vo said. “Instruct her government to lease the vessels, handle all the legal paperwork and the budget, and then let us go, after we had spent so much time holding the center together.”

  Jessica nodded. None of that was the least bit interesting, at least in terms of how Vo had turned into the man sitting across from her now.

  “But she had another question,” Vo said, faltering.

  Jessica saw it then. The entire thing.

  Hopefully, she kept her face calm, because it was possibly the most ambitious thing she could imagine from Casey, and yet perfectly in synch with the times and the woman’s needs.

  They had both watched the recording of zu Arlo Mustering the 189th for the first time. And his address to the Empire, in the aftermath.

  Vo personified St. Legier, as Em had reminded her on more than one occasion.

  And he had fallen silent.

  “What did she ask for, Vo?” Jessica let her voice grow soft and warm.

  Not a former commanding officer addressing one of her students, but a friend who would listen.

  “Me,” he admitted in a voice just tiny, emerging from a giant of a man, both physically and emotionally.

  She smiled, unsure which words to use, and how they might tip him.

  Jessica had never seen Vo this unsure of anything. She hadn’t even believed that sort of thing was possible. This was Vo zu Arlo.

  “And what do you think, Vo?” she asked carefully.

  “It makes perfectly logical sense, from a political and military standpoint,” he said, voice a little louder and heavier, but nowhere near normal. “But she was asking on a personal level.”

  Ah. Casey had gone there.

  Asked the absolute impossible of a man who prided himself on achieving that sort of thing routinely.

  Jessica let the warmth of her smile embrace him, largely ignoring Alan Katche for now. Obviously, that man already knew some of it, but he didn’t know Casey, except as an Emperor.

  “I never had children, Vo,” Jessica said. “With Torsten, I still won’t, because that was a decision I made long ago, and don’t intend to revisit again.”

  He nodded, outwardly calm, a lie she could see in his eyes.

  “But I can think of Casey as one of my own, because I’ve watched her grow up, and helped her when I could,” she continued. “Because she has lost her parents, I can try to fill in that gap, the one Kati might have taken.”

  And how many people would refer to the Empress Kasimira Ekaterina of the House of Alkaev, as simply Kati?

  Another nod, as he didn’t seem capable of speaking.

  Vo was also one of hers, in a way. Only a little more than a decade younger, but she had been born old. Even folks her own age seemed immature, comparatively.

  “I think you would make her happy, Vo,” Jessica said simply. “She is an artist at heart, so she will need someone to ground her, like Torsten does for me. And yes, it makes perfect sense as an Emperor, but I think she would also choose you as a woman, if the two of you happened to meet at a fleet mixer on Ladaux. I know you’ve never understood your effect on women, Vo, but that’s because you look at your face in the mirror, and forget to look at your heart and your soul. Women look past the skin, to see the man underneath.”

  He nodded a third time. Drew in a breath. Released it.

  “What do I do?” he asked.

  But this wasn’t a legate, asking a first centurion for advice. This was a young man asking his mother what she thought.

  She could think of herself that way, too.

  “What do you want, Vo?” she asked. “What would bring you joy?”

  “I don’t know,” he finally admitted, voice grown tiny again.

  “Then don’t do anything,” she said.

  His head came up like a ground squirrel popping out of his den.

  “What?” he almost demanded.

  “Don’t do anything, Vo,” she repeated. “If it’s not right for you, then forcing it will just make you both unhappy. Wait until you’re sure, one way or the other.”

  “Oh,” he said, like a soap bubble popping.

  “I want for both of you to be happy,” Jessica continued. “Let things sort themselves out. But make me one promise?”

  He fixed her with a hard eye now, suddenly back to the thing Moirrey liked to call the Mountain of Doom.

  “Don’t lose yourself in the war,” she said. “You don’t have to come back to her, but I want you to come back. I’ve just come from an argument I had with Tom, Iskra, and Denis, that will result in me moving my permanent flag to Indianapolis, because it would be too easy for me to die in glorious battle to a simple accident. The same holds with you, more so if you go actively or unconsciously seeking it. I need you to act like a soldier this time, and not a hero.”

  Another breath in and out. The eyes lost some of the fierceness, and some of the pain.

  “That might be the first time anyone has asked me to not be a hero, Jessica,” he said finally.

  “Hopefully, it won’t be the last, Vo,” she replied. “I need you solid now, and not pushing the crazy edge of the Jump envelope. That’s what Alan’s for.”

  She turned to Alan Katche now, ignored up until now but not forgotten.

  “You will remind him,” she ordered in a hard, quiet voice. “And you also have a wife and children to return to, First Spear, so I will expect the same behavior from you. We’re here to punish Buran. I can’t do that if you two get yourselves killed stupidly.”

  “Yes, sir,” the Primus Pilus nodded.

  This war wouldn’t be won on th
e ground of any planet, but these men could be lost in the doing.

  And that would be on her head.

  Chapter XXV

  Date of the Republic November 21, 402 RAN Ballard, Severnaya Zemlya

  RAN Ballard was parked quietly in JumpSpace, hoping to go unnoticed. Elzbet Aukley, Science Officer Extraordinaire, looked around once at the rest of the bridge crew to make sure everyone was paying attention.

  Jessica had sent them ahead, so she could scout everything for the fleet quietly and they didn’t have to push it on food while they waited.

  Most vessels never practiced this sort of thing. They thought of the JumpSails as motion, rather than transition. Forgot that you could come to almost a complete stop in JumpSpace, and just hang there, like the one sheepdog in the cartoon, chasing coyotes so fast he accidentally runs off a cliff and then looks at the camera in surprise.

  “Stand by for emergence in twenty seconds,” she said aloud, letting the intercom push her words across the whole ship.

  She had Tactical right now, and the vessel was at action stations. At least as much as a Galactic Survey Cruiser could be. There would be no shooting today. If anything appeared, she would be back in JumpSpace so fast that guns wouldn’t matter.

  Space was big. Solar systems were gigantic places, filled with a tiny volume of material, once you got past the surface of the sun itself. Lots of places to hide in the darkness, if you were careful.

  Emergence.

  Eyes and ears focused, watching and listening.

  Ship at rest, relative to the star itself. Sitting in a gap between orbits of two of the outer planets, with a gas giant closer in and an ice giant behind her. Occasional comets in the neighborhood, but nothing close.

  Down below, as if viewed from a balcony, Severnaya Zemlya.

  Hadn’t changed from her visit, back in April. A little better defended today than it had been then, when Jessica had pulled the local battleship out of position so she could stomp on the station instead. The Megalodon was here this time, an upgraded command vessel with his six Hammerheads that he carried like babies on his back. The older design had four cruisers instead, but only Maulers for serious offense, so Buran was phasing them out for the Megalodon these days.

  Four Tigersharks instead of three, from the looks of things, plus one cruiser she couldn’t identify from here. Either a Mako or a Roughshark, but nothing that was a serious threat to the current force, unless he got suicidally close to engage.

  Five Hammerheads today, where there had only been three in April.

  And one station still undergoing repairs, if all the equipment scattered around the outside was a clue. Hard to tell with just optical telescopes from this range, but her glass was really good, and both ends of the line weren’t moving.

  And that looked like a repair freighter parked just off the north lobe of the station, with about a dozen or so radio signals that looked like repair shuttles for crews.

  Elzbet made a mental note to pay Jessica that Lev when they got home. The First Centurion had actually bet her that they would concentrate on other systems, and repair Severnaya Zemlya’s station slowly.

  What fool would leave an opening like that for Jessica Keller?

  Trick question. One who had never heard her crew brag about 2218 Svati Prime. And one of history’s greatest pranks.

  A timer beeped once on her console, and Elzbet triggered them back into JumpSpace.

  Another fine trick to play.

  Land for sixty seconds, and then depart.

  “Breach complete,” Elzbet said aloud, smiling at her commander, Kanda Lungu. “All hands, thirty minute break while we maneuver for the next insertion.”

  Three or four more drops and she would have pictures from all sides of the planet, over the course of a full twenty-four hours.

  Stitch it all together and she could almost play Jessica an animation of the defenses in motion. Certainly enough to make solid predictions, assuming no warships arrived in the next few days. Or left, opening gaps.

  And then First Expeditionary Fleet would be returning to the scene of the crime.

  Chapter XXVI

  Imperial Founding: 180/11/23. IFV Indianapolis, Severnaya Zemlya

  In person, he decided, she really wasn’t all that impressive physically, at least seated calmly behind her desk, in her working office just off the flag bridge. But Reif Kingston had never dealt with Jessica Keller as a person. Only as a legend.

  Or a demon coming for their souls.

  She rose as he entered, shaking his hand and gesturing for him to take one of the two seats.

  Short, compared to Imperial Ladies he had known. Taller than Lady Moirrey, but almost everyone was, excepting possibly the new Captain of Vanguard, Nina Vanek. Green eyes flashing out of dark, reddish skin. Brown hair when she was younger, down past her shoulders, but with almost half of it grey now in streaks.

  Solid. Built almost like a man in that way, with muscles where Imperial women rarely considered that level of athleticism eye-catching. Not his type, but he could see where many men would find her attractive, with hard curves in all the right places. She could turn stocky, like him, if she didn’t also spend a lot of time down in the gymnasium. His time was spent generally on machines, keeping fit without building muscles.

  Jessica Keller danced. That was the word for it.

  He had even watched her practice once with the fighting robot she had brought aboard, taking over a corner of the aft gym and turning it into a dojo.

  Tom Provst had briefed him that Jessica Keller was a dangerous woman, who had actually killed a skilled knife-fighter in single combat to take her throne. He had been able to see the echoes of that, a decade later, watching her engage the machine with a sword in each hand.

  The Grand Admiral had filled him in on all sorts of other details, expecting this day to arrive.

  “Marcelle,” Keller said to her aide, the tall woman who accompanied her everywhere. “Some coffee for Captain Kingston.”

  “Aye, sir,” and the woman was gone, closing the office door and leaving him alone with the terrible nightmare that had haunted all Imperial officers for so long, before she saved them.

  A quick glance, just to see what she had done to personalize the room. Auberon’s flag in cloth on one wall, from her time commanding both famous ships. A row of pictures underneath it, from a small corvette, all the way up to Indianapolis.

  She eyed him as he returned to her face.

  “Tom Provst speaks highly of you,” she began.

  Reif nodded. Tom had actually threatened to have him Court Martialed and drummed out of the fleet in utter disgrace if he didn’t measure up to what Tom and the Grand Admiral considered acceptable professionalism around this woman.

  “And Indianapolis is a flag cruiser,” she continued. “What are your expectations, when the shooting starts?”

  “Indi’s got the guns to go in with the rest of the Imperial squadron,” Reif replied. “Those ships are Longbow-style cruisers, so they are more generalist vessels, able to be sent anywhere for any mission. My job is to hang a little back and to one side, looking like the junior varsity escort for the important ladies of the fleet, namely Vanguard and Valiant. Your job is to command three squadrons in battle simultaneously, with good admirals who just need to know where you want them to be next. As flag, we can be back with RAN Arad, safe. We can fly with Tom Provst and the Longbows. Or we can join Jež and give him three cruisers so the two battle squadrons are a little more balanced, depending on where the two flight wings go.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, her face showing that she was apparently impressed. Not like the Grand Admiral hadn’t warned him this day was coming. Reif looked forward to his own white uniform, one of these days, but for now, he could be Jessica Keller’s chariot.

  “You’ve been to Samara,” she observed.

  “Twice,” he nodded. “Both stupid missions under admirals that no longer serve, once zu Wachturm was in a position to do somethin
g about that.”

  “Your thoughts on this mission?” she pursued, obviously looking to trip him up on something.

  Reif smiled. Like he could outthink Jessica Keller?

  “I think you’ve got three targets,” he replied. “The station’s probably the most dangerous, but also in the worst shape. The Megalodon’s the biggest, but really just a match for one of the Heavy Dreadnaught. I agree that the Tigersharks are your biggest threat. Crazy way to organize your squadrons, but I’ve read your reports and analyses to HQ.”

  “So you’re okay, going in last?” she asked.

  “Got all that fire-breathing craziness knocked out of me at Samara the first time, First Centurion,” Reif replied. “Kinda looking forward to your way of doing it. Never seen anything like this, so I guarantee you they haven’t either.”

  Chapter XXVII

  Date of the Republic November 25, 402 IFV Vanguard, Severnaya Zemlya

  Denis supposed he should look on everything today as a compliment. Once upon a time, he had been the overlooked Senior Centurion responsible for making sure that the old Strike Carrier Auberon ran well, even when the Lords of the Fleet put well-bred and well-connected fops in command, as a ticket to be punched on their way to a future political career as a civilian.

  And then Jessica had arrived.

  He had remained her right hand from that day forward, even going so far as to be the last of the inner circle to make it to Command Centurion, and only then when they all moved up to the Star Controller.

  Today, he was exercising Fleet Centurion responsibilities, and even the famous Tom Provst had insisted that he have the squadron flag for what was coming. That Tom Provst was willing to follow his orders into combat really brought it home for Denis.

  Even in Imperial service, his was only a white uniform, while Tom had been promoted to red. But Denis had read between the lines of a letter Jessica had shared. One that originated with Emmerich zu Wachturm. Provst had been passively suicidal at one point, but had emerged from the other side of that massive depression and reforged himself into something else.