Winterhome

by Blaze Ward

  Chapter XLV

  Date of the Republic February 7, 403 Fleet Headquarters, St. Legier

  Ainsley didn’t like it, but all the alternatives were worse. And she could honestly challenge anybody who gave her any guff, because there was a precedence for this sort of thing. Ugly and unreasonable as it was.

  So she stood at the outer hatch of the Grand Admiral’s office, escorted by six marines with guns. Gunter Tifft was next to her, wearing his naval uniform today. The almost-dress version, navy blue with four gold rings on his cuff and a matching four solid-brass buttons on each shoulder board. White shirt with a fold-down collar. Lighter-blue tie around the neck in a weird knot. At least they didn’t do the saucer hats indoors or aboard ship.

  Commander, Imperial Fleet.

  Ainsley had brought this on herself. She stood next to Tifft in a matching uniform, except her had five rings and five buttons.

  Captain, Imperial Fleet.

  To go with Command Flight Centurion, retired, Republic of Aquitaine Navy.

  The other option would have involved staying home on Ladaux or Petron, knitting while she waited to see if Yan Bedrov ever made it home.

  Fuck that.

  Someone inside triggered the hatch about the time she was going to say something vulgar and inflammatory to the men around her.

  Two preceded her and Tifft. Four followed. They passed through the first chamber, a meaningless place as vague and sterile as any navy’s outer office, on the way through a second set of doors.

  Admiral Baumgärtner rose from his desk as they entered.

  “That will be all,” he said, dismissing the six guards with a wave of the hand.

  They waited six seconds while the men left and the hatch closed.

  “At ease, and be seated,” the Admiral commanded, returning to his seat.

  He studied them for a moment, like a professor about to announce final grades. Ainsley watched impassively. Hendrik Baumgärtner had never tried to kill her, at least personally, and her team had given as good as it got at First Ballard, so she was willing to call it a draw.

  And she had practically demanded this duty.

  “Due to the nature of security on this mission, as of this moment you will have no further official contact with anyone outside of the immediate team and myself,” the man intoned severely. “Commander Tifft has the necessary codes and signals to route an encrypted message to me. I will handle everything else, including the Grand Admiral and the Emperor. And the Republic Senate or the Crown of Corynthe, if that becomes necessary.”

  He paused, as if judging their ability to absorb his words. Ainsley suppressed a growl. These two took the whole spy business a little too seriously.

  “Sometime in the next four days, you will depart aboard a dedicated courier already set aside and guarded,” the man continued. “Captain Barret will be in command of the mission from that moment until its completion or failure. Commander Tifft will be responsible for making sure Captain Barret can fly both vessels. Anyone familiar with this mission who is not aboard that craft will be taken into isolated custody until it is considered safe to release them. The Grand Admiral has signed the necessary paperwork, as has Emperor Karl VIII, long may she reign. Questions?”

  Ainsley had none. Tifft had put together the most detailed operations plan she had ever seen, and that included several years flying scouts for Jessica Keller.

  “Actually, I do have one,” Ainsley rethought things. “I am legally responsible for the being known as the Lord of Tiki. Given the risks involved, would it be the wiser course of action to leave the projector here in secured custody, so that everything is not lost, if we are?”

  Baumgärtner had met the Bartender. Spoken with him at length as part of the planning for Project Butterfly. The Chief of Staff had not been at St. Legier, the second time, being off handling an inspection tour for the Grand Admiral when it happened.

  He was still Imperial to the bones. That meant something more than it did to her.

  Aquitaine had been founded with the assistance of the Last of the Immortals. At least as far as any of them had known at the time.

  Henri Baudin and the being known as Suvi had helped kickstart human technology, leaping up and outward from the famous Story Road that connected Saxon, Pohang, Zanzibar, and Ballard, four hundred years ago.

  Fribourg had taken a different path, seeing all the Sentient systems as evil made flesh. It was embedded in their cultural matrix. Plus, they had been nearly destroyed by one.

  She watched him grind his teeth and consider the alternatives.

  “There is only one person at present who can answer that question,” he finally concluded. “I will ask her directly.”

  He paused again, watching them. Probably imprinting this memory deep, so he could retrieve it if they never came home. Or even if they did.

  The galaxy would have changed, either way.

  “Delay your original departure window by twenty-four hours,” he said. “I will have an answer for you by then. Dismissed. And Godspeed.”

  Ainsley rose in synch with Tifft. Salutes were inappropriate, so she just nodded to the man and let the Commander lead her out of the chamber.

  Out of the offices that made up the Chief of Staff of the Grand Admiral.

  Out of this section of the station, until the marines stopped escorting them and Ainsley was back into territory she knew.

  She stopped dead in the middle of the hallway and turned to her companion. He had an expectant look, like he had gamed this situation out already and was following decision trees.

  Jessica Keller had infected these people with her black magic.

  “Someplace quiet we can have a private drink and talk,” she said flatly. “One where nobody knows us and we can talk without having to be fully sequestered, or have them rounded up later.”

  He studied her for a moment longer, and then checked the time on an old-fashioned wrist watch. A mechanical chronometer that Fribourg seemed to gravitate towards. She would have pulled out her comm and looked at the local time on the front.

  “I know a place,” he said. “We’re in the right spot between shifts. It should be safe enough.”

  She followed in his wake.

  Down three decks on a lift. Across nearly a kilometer of moving walkways and corridors to a spot that couldn’t be all that far from the exact center of the headquarters station itself.

  It was a dive. Honest to bloody goodness. The nastier parts of Anameleck Prime would have been hard-pressed to give a place the necessary seediness to pull off this room.

  Five booths down each of the long walls, with restrooms on the right in back and an open kitchen window on the left. Horseshoe-shaped bar in the middle, with stools on pipes stuck into the deck. White, hexagonal tiles on the floor, with blue thrown in to make a pattern. Dirt, dust, and grease had been ground into the grout hard enough that it was never coming out.

  Tifft led her to the back booth on the kitchen side. The seats were permanent, and came a meter above her head seated. Rough wood that had been polished by thousands of bottoms. Linoleum-looking tabletop with stains, scars, and a heart someone had managed to burn into the surface with a cutting laser on low power.

  Not that she had ever done something similar.

  Tifft was facing out, so she ended up watching the two cooks in their choreographed dance through a wide window linking this room to the kitchen.

  A waiter detached himself from the wall and brought coffee and menus. He took one look at Tifft and blanched.

  “Sir?” he said in a diffident tone at odds with his former behavior.

  “Brandy for me,” Tifft said. “Captain?”

  Very funny. I’m the only female officer aboard this entire station. Possibly the only woman at all. He’ll remember me like he does you.

  “Bourbon or rye whiskey,” Ainsley said.

  The waiter was gone without another word.

  “We’re safe enough to talk here, Barret,” Tifft said. “En
gineers are insular folk, and this is primarily their domain. One of the reasons I use it for meetings.”

  “This is going to get ugly and messy, Gunter,” she said, finally relaxing enough to call the man by his first name. He was now, officially, her First Officer. “Are you prepared for the fallout?”

  “I’ve only ever pulled the physical trigger once, Ainsley,” he reciprocated. “But I’ve killed six men since Karl VIII became Emperor. Men that needed to die because they were a threat to my Empire.”

  “You’ll be the one outsider in this group,” Ainsley continued. “Is there anyone else we need to consider taking?”

  He smiled at her then. It was like a different person had suddenly put on his face and his body, so radical did the mannerisms change.

  “You know what?” he asked in a different voice as well. “You’ll all go home if this works. There won’t be anybody to challenge my side of the story, outside of the official reports that are going to be buried so deep that zu Wachturm and Hendrik are probably the only ones that will be allowed to read them before we’re all dead. If I brought along a witness, they would just spend their time setting things straight and telling everyone the truth. I’ve got a generation to build the most bullshit legend I want.”

  “You’re nuts,” Ainsley leaned back. “You know that, right?”

  “If not for random luck, I would have been aboard Firehawk that day, Ainsley,” he snarled, falling back to something closer to the Gunter Tifft she had met previously. “A lot of my friends died. I’m just glad you picked me for your vengeance. I owe that bastard.”

  “Okay,” she decided. Kid was on the level with this one. “So we’re going to steal a bus, load everybody on the Grand Admiral’s personal shuttle, and disappear for six months or a year?”

  “I’ll bring along a lot of books,” he replied. “You’ve got Yan. Pops has Summer. Personally, I don’t think Lady Moirrey has any business being there, but that’s above my pay grade and there’s no way to make Digger Wolanski disappear without raising a ruckus somewhere. And I’ll be the only Imperial around here to say what really happened, when people buy me drinks in bars.”

  “Assuming we survive,” she challenged.

  “You don’t strike me as suicidal, Ainsley,” he retorted. “Even Yan’s not, although I was utterly gobsmacked, the first time I read his report about the War God. Brass balls the size of cannonballs.”

  “There was no other way to play that one,” she said quietly. “None that didn’t end up with the whole galaxy at risk.”

  “That’s my point,” Gunter tapped a finger on the table top. “You people are all prepared to play extremely high stakes poker. But you’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to survive, afterwards. I’m betting on being able to be close enough to that luck to catch the edge of it.”

  The waiter returned with two glasses and departed in silence. Ainsley was impressed. Most times, particularly in a dive like this, he would have given some sort of snarky commentary.

  She had seen a reserve of fear in the guy’s eyes instead. Like he knew who the real Gunter Tifft was.

  Ainsley knew. Grand Admiral himself had filled in the critical details. Young man was really a killer with a heart of ice.

  He would need it, when that moment came.

  Chapter XLVI

  Common Era: 13450, Day 53. Winterhome. Palace of the Eldest.

  Ve Marak Entruk Han studied the woman who had been brought before them in the Chamber of the Mandarins. Au Nadaf Elug Rov was humbled, more than had she been actually beaten by the Warriors who accompanied her from Severnaya Zemlya.

  Han glanced right and left to confirm the opinion of his cohorts. Barely-concealed rage. It was well.

  “We expect more of a Minister of the Fourth Rank,” Han announced in a hard, lethal voice, staring death at the woman. “It is not enough to send the Warriors off to die, if one is not prepared to share their fate. That what happened next was unstoppable in hindsight does not excuse cowardice before.”

  Han stopped himself from going further, as hard as it was to retain control. Keller was causing the people of The Holding to waver in their commitments. To flee rather than fight.

  To fail.

  He turned himself to face the wall of the Temple.

  “Eldest, what is your guidance?” he asked in a simple voice, modulating the emotion as much as possible before a god.

  The entity Buran took form, an alien face that only suggested human without deigning to descend from the heavens.

  “Au Nadaf Elug Rov is stripped of her rank as a Minister and Scholar,” The Eldest proclaimed. “Punish her harshly for a year, and then execute her on the anniversary of the attack, as a reminder that moral failure is not acceptable.”

  “It shall be done,” Han announced, mollified that the failure of the woman was not cast at his feet.

  He had never met Au Nadaf Elug Rov before today, to the best of his knowledge, but as the Minister of the Left Interior, he spoke for The Eldest, The Mandarins, the Scholars, and the Protectorate of Man.

  Han turned and signaled to the Warriors to remove their prisoner. He crushed the urge to rub the bridge of his nose in sight of others, wondering briefly if the galaxy had indeed changed and gone so far that he could no longer anticipate the future.

  Perhaps he should bring his own retirement forward six months and leave now, to give the others a chance to change the path of planning. No man or woman is irreplaceable, just as no problem is insurmountable.

  Han looked to the others, so much younger, even in their own advanced age. Saw the calculating looks not quite suppressed fast enough.

  Yes, they all wondered as well.

  “Leave me,” he commanded.

  The others paused for a moment, then rose as one and departed. Minister of the Left Facet was still first among equals and could issue such orders, if the others chose to obey.

  Today, they chose, but he could see a different outcome in the near future.

  His time was ending.

  The door closed, leaving Han alone with the two guards always present. They were not for him, but to protect The Eldest from all. Including ancient Ministers of the Left Facet beset by questions.

  “Eldest, should I retire now, rather than on the original date?” he asked out loud in a voice that had suddenly found calmness.

  There was a pause. Buran the God thought at speeds incomprehensible, but he also possessed all the knowledge of human history. Even those files required time to parse.

  “No,” the God replied. “Your doubts are noted and expected, but cultural morale must be maintained. To remove you from office today would be to cast doubt upon the entire plan itself, at a moment when unexpected fracture lines have surfaced.”

  Han nodded. On the one hand, relieved that he was still valued. On the other, an admission that his time had indeed passed, and that he should consciously step back and let the others take a greater responsibility, over these last hundred and eighty days.

  “Keller should not be able to do the things she has demonstrated,” Buran continued suddenly in the privacy of a room where the Warriors would never speak.

  “Eldest?” Han asked, shocked by the follow-up observation.

  “She is shown to be a genius in the eighth standard deviation of human capabilities,” Buran noted clinically. “But her knowledge of our culture is too specific, too precise to predict the measures she has taken as a random string of so-called luck.”

  “We know, with some confirmation, that the former Khan of Trusski, Ul Banop Cheani Yuur, departed willingly to study the barbarians, and then disappeared from all observation, including our spies. It is suspected that he has defected, as his execution following the raid on the Imperial Capital world would have been publicized.”

  “More data is required,” Buran decided. “Activate all of your spies in Fribourg immediately, regardless of the personal risk. The new attack on Severnaya Zemlya suggests a change in Keller’s offensive posture and
strategy and we must respond more quickly. Pull all offensive forces from the assaults on NovLao, retaining only enough ships to maintain the perimeter. Reinforce Altai, Lena, and the interior sectors while we await the intelligence that identifies Keller’s weakness.”

  “It shall be done, Eldest,” Han bowed his forehead to the cool marble floor.

  He could pass these orders on and then begin the process of letting the other three Mandarins supervise the war as he retired.

  The Eldest was the most intelligent being in the universe. No mere human could out-think him. Not even a barbarian like Jessica Keller.

  Chapter XLVII

  In the Tenth Year of Jessica Keller, Queen of the Pirates: February the Tenth Departing St. Legier

  “That’s the most illogically insane thing you’ve ever proposed, punk,” Summer heard Pops grouse as she listened to the conversation with a laughing ear.

  “So far, old man,” Yan replied, laughing anyway. “The day is young.”

  The rest of them joined in.

  The interior of Grand Admiral Emmerich zu Wachturm’s personal transport wasn’t as sleek and luxurious as she would have expected, but Summer only had stories and recollections from others, having never met the man except in passing, where she carefully stayed well to the back of the conversation.

  She would put it down to shyness, if anyone asked, because Summer didn’t think that her worst enemy in the last six thousand years would have recognized her. This outer shell had been modified enough from the young Yeoman image she had presented for all those decades when she was the Provost of the Library at Alexandria Station.

  Still, better safe than dead. He had already gone well out of his way to try to kill her once. Today he wouldn’t even bat an eye if he had to shoot her in the face.

  Moirrey wouldn’t be able to help, and the others had no clue, she hoped, so she pretended to be Pops’ airhead girlfriend and hung out.

  It helped that Pops was such an amazingly interesting person, as she sat in one of the leather chairs around a meeting table in the middle area of the courier and watched the dynamics play out around her.