Winterhome

by Blaze Ward

  “With one heavy dreadnaught in the middle somewhere,” Alistair growled happily. “Not too maneuverable, but trundling along while you argue with lighter troops you think you can defeat, until it gets to be too late to escape.”

  “What about air power, General?” Dylan Moroder asked. He commanded Third Ala, only because the other two men were more senior, not more aggressive or competent. “Do we need to permanently attach something like GunShips as a ground element under our command? Or ask Lady Moirrey to invent us something?”

  Voices stepped on each other as everyone had an opinion on one of the two topics.

  Vo started to do something to tamp it all down when Ames slammed her open palm down on the surface of the table hard enough to make nearly everybody jump. Vo hadn’t, but he had been right looking at her. Neither Street or Danville had flinched.

  Telling, that.

  Every head had rotated towards her. Most of them were friendly. A few neutral. Nobody believed anymore that she didn’t belong in the uniform, so Vo had made some progress there. But these men were all killers. Any method to hurt the enemy faster or better was on the table for them to consider.

  Rather than speak, Victoria leaned back and nodded to Vo.

  He felt like he was back in school again, a room full of rowdy boys and a single woman grownup as the teacher.

  He grinned at her. She grinned back, possibly reading his mind.

  “Both ideas have merit,” Vo said. “We need to integrate the new capabilities and find out their strengths and weaknesses, plus we need to bring the new blood up to snuff.”

  He paused to fix the five Cohort Commanders with his gaze.

  “You five figure out what you think you need in terms of formation in the field,” Vo continued. “Understanding that most of the time, my plan is going to be to attack somewhere and do as much damage as we can early. At some point, they will wake up and respond, and most of the time they will have an entire planetary militia to call upon. They won’t be able to sneak up on us if Jessica has high orbit, but they can coordinate to hit us from all sides at the same time, if they have any competence in command. Train your teams to think in a double circumvallation. Us wrapped around a valuable target we are trying to destroy, while keeping them from getting behind us.”

  “Scouts find them and fix them, and then immediately run like hell for the rear flanks to encircle the bastard and keep them off our asses while the other four Alae go to work?” Omar LeCoat asked.

  Second Ala’s commander was a big man. Almost Vo’s size and weight, with a ruddy complexion, dark hair, and a nose that had been broken when he was a boxer in school, and never reset right.

  “Exactly that,” Vo agreed. “Mobility in warfare is success. We’re like sharks. As soon as we stop swimming, we’ll drown, so you need to get everyone into the habit of sleeping in a different hole every night, even without combat. I figure we’ve got about six or eight weeks here before Jessica’s people find us our next victim. Let’s use them to out-think the bastards who are going to study what we did at Severnaya Zemlya, and try to stop us next time. Questions?”

  There were none. Problems had been identified. Training would start up again hard in three days to break bad habits and reinforce good ones. Plus get ahead of the men and women who would be trying to learn how to defeat the 189th on the ground.

  Vo wasn’t about to let them.

  “Dismissed,” he ordered, standing up with a smile and nodding.

  Chapter LIII

  Date of the Republic February 27, 403 IFV Indianapolis, Forward Operating Theater

  “First Expeditionary Fleet, this is Nina Vanek aboard Vanguard. I have the flag,” a harsh voice emerged from the speakers across the office space from Jessica, cutting her to the quick. “All hands to battle stations.”

  Jessica paused just long enough to make sure her coffee mug was closed and broke for the door. It was early in ship’s day, but she had been up for almost an hour, showered, cleaned and doing paperwork.

  Shoes could wait until later.

  Yan’s design had put her suite almost across from the flag bridge, just as on Vanguard, so she was there quickly. Enej had obviously still been asleep, so he was several steps behind her and carrying a tunic in one hand, still dressed in the loose pants he normally slept in.

  The projection was live when she slammed into a chair and strapped herself down. They were in deep space in one of the quietest parts of the M’Hanii Gulf she had been able to locate.

  Six cruiser signatures representing her team. One heavy dreadnaught. One fleet strike carrier. A host of corvettes circling them like locusts.

  Something was missing.

  “Flag, this is Keller,” she called, trusting that the morning shift already had the comm linked up and ready. “Where’s the station?”

  “That’s why we’re at alert, boss,” Nina replied seriously. “According to our nav records, we should be about twenty light-minutes out. Close enough to spot him and say hello, instead of just dropping out right on top of the man and tempting his paranoid gunners to fire first and ask later. Like that group would.”

  “I have the flag,” Jessica decided.

  “Acknowledged, Flag,” Nina replied, her tone at once both wistful and relieved.

  The woman was a fantastic combat commander, but this was going to be something far messier.

  “Ballard, this is Keller,” she said. “Bounce in and scan. Everyone else, proceed immediately to Observation Point Seven and form up. CM-404, you have local scouting responsibilities until otherwise notified. All ships maintain alert.”

  Boards went green almost as fast as signals disappeared from her board. People knew what to do, so they went right ahead and moved. Indianapolis was one of the last ships to vanish, mostly because Reif’s men probably hadn’t been expecting to immediately run for cover, rather than hang around, trying to sort things out while a potential ambush lined them up.

  That was how you got yourself hurt.

  “How long were we in RealSpace?” Jessica asked as Enej cleared his eyes and gratefully sucked at a mug of something warm one of his people stuffed into his hands as he walked in.

  “Three minutes, thirty seconds, roughly,” he replied after checking the log.

  She nodded and considered.

  There were a number of reasons why local space would be empty. None of them were good, but not all of them were catastrophically bad.

  Either Buran had finally located Whughy’s base and attacked it, or he had an inclination that they were about to, and had executed one of his many contingency plans.

  Wreckage left over when Ballard got closer would tell the tale.

  Jessica didn’t think she was lucky enough that a single Hammerhead or Mako-class ship had decided to attack the station by itself. The Forward Base had six Type-4 beam emplacements, each with enough coverage that at least three could hit you on any facing.

  Good way to lose pieces of your ship.

  Conversely, a full fleet might have landed with enough surprise to damage one of the support vessels: Bulldog or the tug CT-9492. Or caught one of the freighters on their regular run.

  The station itself could disappear into JumpSpace, which ought to be a lovely surprise, so they would have ignored it and gone after the other vessels that they would have thought could escape, before returning to the station.

  Hopefully, Arott had just gotten paranoid and moved, having been here longer than perhaps he thought was safe.

  In any case, she would need to send a message home and rearrange her tactical planning.

  Her strategy would not change. She was in the gulf, striking into Altai sector, and would continue to do so, unless she decided to go after Lena next. Samara and the systems closer to Osynth B’Udan would continue to be ignored. Most of them were of no economic significance, and only Samara was heavily defended.

  And that system was a trap in big, red letters.

  There were days when the thought of building on
e thousand corvettes, each with a single Primary beam on the bow like a unicorn, sounded like fun. Sail into Samara like a swarm of fire ants, and bite Buran’s fleet to death.

  She would rather force The Eldest to withdraw from the system completely, or tie up a huge chunk of his sector fleet where they couldn’t do anything, like raid Imperial worlds.

  Forty-three minutes of nervousness later, Ballard dropped into close proximity to send a message. Elzbet wasn’t about to drop out close enough that one of the other ships would kill her, even accidentally.

  Jessica read the note and nodded. Not the best outcome. Not the worst. And all their paranoia had served them well, since apparently nobody had gotten complacent enough to be caught asleep.

  “Confirmed,” Enej said. “A Hammerhead found them and got detected in turn. They fled. Huh, that’s interesting.”

  “What?” Jessica asked.

  “Junkyard Chihuahua apparently learned the trick from Kigali about softly dropping an inactive probe into RealSpace from inside Jump,” Enej said. “Arott had it sitting there quietly, waiting for a pre-tagged transponder signal from one of our ships. Once it identified a friend, it went live and transmitted a full log. Everyone got away well enough, and Arott’s pulled a fast one.”

  She looked at the message and laughed. Most commanders would usually only move a short distance one way or the other. Just enough to consider themselves safe. A few might consider returning to their earlier spot, from which they had launched the devastating raid on Stanovoy.

  Arott Whughy had gone the other direction, almost to the middle of the river of darkness facing Lena, the star and system that gave the sector its name.

  Jessica suspected that he had just substituted Lena for Ninagirsu in their plans and gone about his business. She looked at the date on the message. February 10. He might be just now setting himself up, after a long sail on slow vessels to get there.

  She couldn’t overhaul him, but she could get there in six days.

  “Is the probe still there?” she asked.

  “Affirmative,” Enej said. “Ballard figured it would need to talk to more than one convoy.”

  “She got that right,” Jessica said. “Send CE-401 back to Osynth B’Udan with the new coordinates immediately, so any freighters can redirect instead of having to come here first and maybe wander into whatever ambush Buran’s planning if they can free up some ships.”

  “Is it worth touching Ninagirsu?” Enej asked. “Anyone coming here to attack Arott probably comes from there.”

  “If we had Provst’s team, yes,” she replied. “Without them, I’d rather cause more chaos somewhere else. Especially now that they had figured out what we’ve been doing and will get aggressive in patrolling the Gulf, looking for us.”

  “Any reason we need to stay in the darkness then?” Enej asked, his chess-master face getting serious.

  Something about his tone caused Jessica to pause. She might be the best commander she knew, but part of that was knowing when to listen to good ideas.

  “What evil lurks behind those eyes?” she asked, only half-joking.

  Enej played chess. Jessica’s ideas of combat came from Valse d’Glaive, the Waltz of Swords. She could no longer routinely defeat that damned fighting robot above a six setting, but that was age creeping up on her. Thirty-four-year-old Jessica and forty-four-year-old Jessica were two different people physically.

  She was smart enough to grow old gracefully, she hoped.

  “We’ve been blowing up Pochtovyi Trakt, the postal road that bastard used as a rapid transportation network,” Enej’s face got calm and serious. “Those were set between inhabited stars to make it easy for him, because we didn’t need to drop out of JumpSpace to look around. Why can’t we just camp someplace off the back of Ninagirsu?”

  She had considered it, more than once. Balanced the risk and reward. They could do it, as long as they moved every month or so, lest scouts wandering around spot them in the distance and bring in help.

  But Enej had a point. Scouts now would have decided they had figured out Keller’s strategy, and would probably flood the M’Hanii Gulf, looking. That was part of the reason Arott had moved so far. Force them to look for a long time, if they had the patience.

  Did they have that patience?

  “Grab a team and do a study while we’re headed to meet Arott,” she decided. “Blue Team/Gold Team, and bring in Tactical Officers from the corvettes to get them thinking about how to solve the next three maneuvers.”

  He smiled and nodded.

  The cruisers, with the exception of Qin Lun, already had first rate Tactical Officers. People who had served with Jessica for years. Some of them as long as a decade, like Enej. The corvettes, with the exception of Arsen Lam, had newer folks who knew how to think defensively, for the most part, but not how to get out ahead of the bad guys and go offensive.

  That was the purpose of Blue Team/Gold Team exercises. Training the next generation of leaders. Make everyone better.

  “Denis, this is Jessica,” she said conversationally, letting the system route her signal to the Fleet Centurion/Admiral of the White aboard Vanguard.

  His face came live in the projection with a questioning look. He probably could read her mind, at this point, but always waited for her to talk.

  “Get everyone thirty light-hours or so further away,” she said. “Then Enej will have some squadron signals. Plot a course to Arott with two waypoints built in, and we’ll go from there. I’m going back to work in my office.”

  Denis nodded and cut the signal. Just as simple as that. Hear an order. Make it work.

  Jessica rose and let the team figure out what they needed. She had trained them well enough that she could ignore them and go after the piles of paperwork.

  That was a war that never ended.

  Chapter LIV

  Date of the Republic April 29, 403 Experimental Courier Butterfly, Weevohn

  Moirrey sighed and watched outs the dock window as the work got dunned. Outsides, in death pressures mean enough ta burns, th’Butterfly were comin’ togethers.

  Yan, Pops, and Ainsley were floatin’ in suits nexts to the station, supervising the attachment of the last piece, a monstrous battery array adapted from a fleet battle station. Gunter were aboard the Butterfly, watching boards.

  She and the chick could just watch from nearby, nothin’ to do but provides morale support.

  Summer leaned close and put a comfortin’s arms rounds her shoulder, so Moirrey jess leaned in and rested her head on the gal’s shoulder, sister-like.

  “You’ll be more famous than I will, in another century,” Summer murmured quiet-likes.

  Moirrey’s head popped up and looked ’rounds, but they had the dock to themselves. She could do that, Ritter of the Imperial Household, and all that. Plus Grand Admiral’s nastygram letter that come with them.

  Today, wee bit Moirrey Kermode, lost rascal o’ Saxilby’n’Pint-sized troublemaker, spoke for the Empire. Fer the whole, damend galaxy’n’stuff.

  For all of galactic humanity, living and yet to be borned.

  Heady stuff, folks.

  “T’were necessary,” she said back, quiet nuff. “Stops the bad one, let everyone else figures they’s own ways for’ard.”

  Moirrey hugged her tighter with the right arm.

  “Plus, we’re better than banging rocks together ’cause of you, most planets,” Moirrey continued.

  “Maybe,” Summer said. “Doyle and Piper and the rest would have gotten you there without me. Would have taken longer, but it would have happened. And Henri is one of the few Founders I’ve ever studied who didn’t need a bloody war or revolution to put something in place.”

  “Music were his war, lass,” Moirrey replied. “Only one I knows that good since Baudin sits on the throne at St. Legier today. Hopes she writes more.”

  “Me, too,” Summer agreed. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to know her as well as Piper or Henri, but the risk is too great. She might
see through my façade.”

  “So yer nots comin’ home with us, if’ns we survive?” Moirrey hugged tighter. Both arms went around the tall woman, and her arms came back.

  Was like being with Mom again, when she was eight and had nightmares.

  “No,” Summer countered. “That would set off too many alarms and she’s smart enough to start digging at that point. But I’ll always be at the back of the room, the bubbly airhead Pops brought along to keep his nights warm and scrub his back in the shower. Nothing more.”

  “Is good,” Moirrey snuggled in closer. “Thought you said ten years ago that you were disappearing from human history fer now.”

  “Ayumu Ulfsson would have never stood for it, Pint-sized,” Summer hugged her tighter.

  “Yer da?” Moirrey asked.

  “My first commander,” Summer corrected. “Back when I was just a Concord probe-cutter, right after the Great War ended. When New Berne, the Union Of Worlds, and Balustrade were all effectively crippled and the Concord inherited the galaxy by default. He taught me right and wrong. Javier Aritza is the man I truly consider my father.”

  “The Science Officer, in capital letters,” Moirrey noted. “Looked him up once. Not much detail, but his name were still around, after all these years.”

  “He was even more impressive than Pops Nakamura, Moirrey,” Summer said quietly.

  Fer an android, Moirrey could feel the sniffles take hold o’the woman.

  “He taught me poker as a way to read and understand humans,” Summer continued. “Protected me when pirates came and cut up my first ship, and then eventually put me on a stolen, First-Rate-Galleon. He was a drunk, a pirate, a scholar, an officer, a clown, and a hero in his time. He’s buried on Altai somewhere, but I’ve obviously never gotten a chance to visit his grave. Would never find it, but it would be nice to see that spot where the Khatum, Behnam Sherazi, had her palace in those days, even if it has been erased by time. I could find it, and her tomb. He’s close by.”

  Yup. Tears.