Winterhome

by Blaze Ward

  “Very little,” Six said. “She appears to have both a perfect understanding of the legalities and subtleties of this art, and very loyal people around her, exhibiting great competence.”

  “But she slipped up?” Torsten pressed.

  “Not that anyone would have caught her, without doing the numbers-crunching we have done.”

  “Tell me,” Torsten commanded.

  “Her meetings are generally of government record,” Six began. “Not what was discussed obviously, but who she met with, as she is a foreign agent operating in the heart of the empire. There is a pattern.”

  Pattern. The magic word. The thing that caused data analysts to turn cartwheels in hallways, if they stood up to academic rigor.

  As these would have had to, to come to Six’s attention.

  Torsten nodded understanding and let the man continue.

  “Many of her meetings are trade related,” the spy said. “Opening up the caravans of commerce to perhaps bind the two nations more securely into a peace by adding an economic quotient to the balance.”

  Torsten smiled. Rarely were spies also poets. Even Jessica accused him of sounding like a college professor too often.

  “But we have our own list of nobles that is complete, and more detailed than many outsiders probably imagine,” Six smiled back. “We try to rate every noble, from the lowest Freiherr to the highest Duke, with a ten-point scale on a few dozen axes of motion. Intellect, power, charisma, and loyalty factor highly. Most nobles score in the middle on most things, as one would expect. Those are generally conservative folks, not given to transformation that might not benefit them.”

  “What’s your normal cut-off for human analysis?” Torsten stepped the conversation forward. Experts on a technical topic, rather than politicians looking to grand-stand.

  “Two standard deviations from assembled mean causes a file to be flagged,” he replied. “Three causes it to be reviewed immediately. Subsequent quarterly evaluations with the same results usually involved Imperial Security attaching resources to a case.”

  “Both ends of the scale?” Torsten pressed.

  “The super-patriotic can be just as dangerous as the revolutionary intent on burning things down, Chief of Deputies,” Six said. “Those sorts of men can frequently convince themselves that their actions were for the greatest good, at least as they interpreted it, rather than how a larger pool of folks might consider some outcomes. The Empire is too fragile for anyone to be allowed to rock the boat right now.”

  “Good,” Torsten agreed. “Some people have not come to understand that my job is frequently to do nothing, so that people do not feel they have to react to me. Casey is the same way, although she chafes at such restrictions.”

  “And after you, Chief of Deputies?” the spy fixed his gaze. “We measure your reign with an hourglass, not a henge.”

  That was solid truth. Jessica would eventually return home to Petron, taking him with her, he hoped. Another man would step into his shoes at that point. Would have to deal with the rivalries of a newly-emboldened House of the People not necessarily willing to cede power back to the reconstituted House of Dukes, phoenix risen from the ashes of Werder. And they would have Kasimira Wiegand on the throne to contend with.

  “Who has Chavarría met with?” Torsten deflected the conversation back onto its original course.

  “Nobody and everybody,” the spy retorted. “None of her meetings were problematic. The pattern was.”

  “Elucidate,” Torsten commanded, feeling like the august professor Jessica occasionally accused him of impersonating.

  Socrates, challenging Plato to speak truths rather than academic platitudes.

  “If we eliminate a certain class of nobles from the equation, things change,” Six said. “Those men with significant holdings arranged in such a way that trade with Aquitaine would be immediately beneficial, who at the same time rate fives and sixes on all the relevant political scorecards. The remainder are an interesting cross-section of men with values three and below, and seven and above.”

  “The threats at both ends?” Torsten saw, but held his word back.

  That was the risk of espionage: Seeing patterns that perhaps did not actually exist, but lined up when crunched through a computer that was only as smart as the man programming it and the man reading the results.

  “At both ends, yes,” Six said. “With an equal balance of the two.”

  “And that matters because?” Torsten asked.

  “If she were up to mischief, she would generally meet more with the trouble-makers, as we identify them,” Six replied. “If she were looking to support the Empire in the future, the opposite.”

  “What if she were trying to encourage pure disruption, and seeking to identify the best way to draw those battle lines to bring it to fruition?” Torsten asked. “While retaining clean hands in the process?”

  “Then it would look remarkably like the current outcomes, Chief of Deputies,” the spy’s face and voice got serious. “And we would want to escalate our findings to the very highest levels of government, without necessarily letting outsiders realize what we may have suspected or uncovered.”

  And Casey would not want to declare the Aquitaine representative persona non grata, particularly not at the moment when their single best fleet was what was turning the tide in the war on Buran. The Senate might take the insult personally, and withdraw all assistance as quickly as messages could be sent.

  The Peace would probably hold, but it would certainly chill things awkwardly at an inopportune moment.

  Knowing Judit, as Torsten had come to after studying the woman, he would not put it past the woman to know exactly how to dance that ledge safely.

  “Is it worth pre-empting her plans by having hard and unpleasant meetings with some of these people, or would that escalate things at the wrong moment?” Torsten ventured.

  “We cannot judge the delicacy, sir,” he replied. “The pattern we have identified is not robust enough for predictive power. At least not yet.”

  “Find me weak links we could spall off,” Torsten decided. “Men we could drag into a quiet room and sweat, providing some of the evidence gathered, in order to force compliance with the government’s wishes.”

  “Both ends?” Six asked.

  “Both ends,” Torsten agreed. “Humans are naturally lazy. Every day I can force them to do nothing is another day everybody else learns to live with the new way of doing things. My way. And after a while, the majority will have no interest in going back.”

  “As you command. Chief of Deputies.”

  Torsten rose and left the man and his three ghosts behind in the room. He backtracked his way to his own office. Some of this he would need to tell Casey.

  And get her decision as to how much he should tell Jessica.

  That was a fracture line nobody could adequately predict.

  Chapter LXIV

  Date of the Republic May 20, 403 Battenhouse Ranch, Lighthouse Station

  The weather today was lovely. Calm and pleasant under clear skies, so Jessica had collected Denis, Tom, and Iskra, and gone for a walk. Right now, they were several hundred meters uphill from the bunkhouse, watching a parade of workers move like ants as new buildings went up.

  If she squinted, she could see two other groups across the lake, building up a wharf and laying a foundation for the Duke’s first palace, however small it might be. It would still become a seat of power.

  Jessica leaned back against the fence that separated this cattle pen from the open pasture above them on the hill. Battenhouse had a team of apparently-expert sailor-cowboys helping gather up all the cattle that had been left to go feral. This pen was still empty for now, but that would change in another day or so.

  The horses had apparently walked up to the gate when humans returned, happy to be fed and curried regularly. But she wasn’t surprised, after hearing Vo’s stories about Thuringwell.

  Iskra looked the most serious today, facing her. D
enis was calmness itself, waiting for clues so he could prepare. Tom Provst’s eyes were distant, but without the anger or despair Em and others had warned her about.

  “What I am about to tell you is part of a new classification so high that neither Fribourg nor Aquitaine have formal rules for it,” Jessica said. “As Torsten joked, we’re not even allowed to know it ourselves, and must promise to forget everything afterwards.”

  That got a smile from Provst. And scowls from the other two.

  Weird.

  “Moirrey came to me with a concept a while ago,” Jessica continued. “Something Yan had said about planet-crackers had triggered her imagination.”

  “Can you actually build a planet-cracker?” Iskra asked sharply, but she was an engineer, and that was what they did. “Blow up a whole, damned planet?”

  “I have no idea, Iskra,” Jessica said. “Probably, but my guess is that the amount of energy you would need to harness is a significant portion of the output of a normal star. And I’m sure some mad science fiction writer has created a Sunbeam by lasing the entire output of a star, at some point. They’re like that.”

  “Got it,” she said. “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s a good question,” Jessica replied. “Moirrey apparently built something smaller, with the help of Yan and Pops. And by smaller, it apparently classifies as a Type-6 beam.”

  Denis and Tom both muttered the same profanity at the same time, looked at each other, and grinned. Iskra’s eyes got wide and she whistled.

  “What the hell do you do with something like that?” Tom asked finally.

  Jessica looked around, just case, but even the birds were keeping a respectful distance today.

  “They’re going after Winterhome,” Jessica said.

  “But you just said this wasn’t a planet-cracker, Jessica,” Denis countered. “What could they hit to make it worth doing?”

  “The Golden Pearl,” Jessica said, quoting Seeker’s poetry from Lord of Winter. “The magnificent orbital platform that houses the god-machine known as Buran.”

  “Alexandria Station,” Iskra breathed.

  Jessica nodded, watching the light dawn on the two men.

  “Moirrey understands how the station is built, because she was able to stop the assassin aboard Alexandria Station with Suvi’s help,” Jessica began to hedge the truth. “They eventually failed, and Em destroyed the place, but Suvi was able to transfer backup copies of herself, I suppose you might call them, off-site, and those were enough of her memories and personality that they could build a new one later.”

  “Can someone rebuild Buran?” Denis asked.

  “Not if we keep up the pressure,” Tom replied. “Kill the king and then keep killing anyone that tries to build a new one. My question would be what his fleet does without its master.”

  “And that’s why we push,” Jessica said. “Em’s going to start shifting units and ships forward and sideways, ignoring some systems while dramatically reinforcing Osynth B’Udan, St. Legier, and others. He’s also going to start raiding the systems behind us, everywhere except Samara, like we did before Trusski. Like us, his goal is killing every Hammerhead, Mako, and Tigershark he can lay guns on, on the assumption that without the god, they might not be able to replace them.”

  “They can still build warships, Jessica,” Iskra noted.

  “Yes, but what good are those, if men and women must do everything?” Jessica asked. “They don’t have JumpSails, unless they get them from us, so they are slower and less precise in their jumps. And they’ll know it. My hope is that the regional khans will rise up and decide to seek power for themselves. Human nature has always been that way. Having a God in charge won’t change that.”

  “So suppose we do kill Buran,” Tom asked. “Then what?”

  “Short term, we kill any facility that might be turning out replacement parts for gods, if we can,” she answered, holding up her hands. “The silicon parts of a Sentient system are a dozen or so boards, about this size, according to what Suvi told us. Their fleet has always been small, but each of those ships might have the requisite tools to become gods themselves, with a little work. Or the freedom that we’ll give them.”

  “Do we know where they make those parts?” Denis asked.

  “No,” Jessica said. “But I suspect, without any evidence, that Buran would want it close. Perhaps under his direct control. He was a manufacturing factory controller, so perhaps he makes them himself. He might also have built limiters into them, to stop any other Sentient from challenging his authority.”

  “Aboard the Golden Pearl?” Tom’s smile turned ugly, but it matched hers.

  “We can only hope, Tom,” Jessica offered. “If so, then it might be two birds, one stone time. But I’m prepared to go after shipyards next, or whatever factory might make them instead. And yes, I’ll happily bombard that sort of place from orbit until it becomes a radioactive crater for ten thousand years.”

  “I’m in,” Denis announced. “Collateral damage and all.”

  “Me, too,” Iskra nodded.

  “Tom?” Jessica asked.

  “Destruction, First Centurion,” he said calmly. “Utter destruction. I’d happily drive Valiant into the ground personally and detonate it, if we found the place where they built those parts.”

  “Good,” Jessica said. “Now, understand. What I have just told you can never be repeated, at least until Em or Casey give you direct permission. If we were able to build this weapon, someone else could figure out how and replicate it. Moirrey’s done her part to keep the information as scattered as possible, but we probably need to take this to our graves and beyond. Questions?”

  “Add it to the list,” Denis smiled at her.

  Yes, she supposed that they did have a number of secrets between then. Not the biggest ones, but he had been her right hand, right fist, for more than a decade. Torsten and Moirrey might be the only people she trusted more than Denis.

  “I will remind you, then, of Order 48, and all that it implies for this secret,” Jessica’s voice got serious.

  Order 48: No commanding officer, including Tactical Officers who exercise command authority in combat, can allow themselves to be taken prisoner by Buran’s forces. They will exercise any and all options to evade capture, including self-termination, if the officer feels that is the only way to keep the information in his or her head out of enemy hands, in the event of probable torture.

  It was ugly but necessary.

  The other three faces joined her in seriousness. Buran might be able to do something to stop Moirrey, if he knew what was coming.

  Their job was to distract the beast with explosions and chaos, over here. Speed up the music, as Yan Bedrov liked to say, until the beast tripped and broke a leg.

  “Again, questions?” Jessica asked after a few moments.

  Heads shaken in the negative.

  “Then I need you to plan for Barnaul,” she continued. “At Stanovoy we introduced retribution. At Yenisei, we laid a trap. At First Severnaya Zemlya, we gave them fear. Second Severnaya Zemlya was about raising the bar to include personal destruction on the ground. Second Barnaul will not be an extinction event. I want them scared, but not desperate. Always give them a way out. But we will break the back of Barnaul.”

  “2218 Svati Prime?” Iskra asked. “Except a real radiological bomb this time?”

  “Look into what options we have,” Jessica replied. “The images I have seen are a giant pit mine with tunnels, so I’m not sure we could even do that much damage with Type-4s from orbit. Losing the workforce will be a heavy blow. Losing the mine for a generation will probably kill the colony and they’ll have to evacuate.”

  “Chaos and fear,” Tom Provst said. “Do we stay long enough to bait a trap?”

  “No,” Jessica said. “We’ll move on and hit someone else. Every time they have to send a fleet after us, there is a chance we’ll hit someone else who’s undergunned where we come in, or a system like Stanovoy where we can crush all
the stations and annihilate their transportation sector. I don’t care if they eventually want peace. I can’t see Casey accepting any offer that doesn’t involve Buran’s processors on a stick, and I can’t see a god accepting self-termination as the cost of peace.”

  Tom nodded. So did the other two.

  “Okay, you have your orders,” Jessica said. “Let’s go kill things.”

  Chapter LXV

  Imperial Founding: 181/05/22. Fort Kosnett, Lighthouse Station

  With an entire planet to pick from, Vo had to give Duke Indovina and CS-405’s staff credit for picking out a particularly choice patch of land as the first training base for the 189th to colonize.

  Fort Kosnett, named for the Command Centurion responsible for the planet.

  Coastal, so they could practice short-range beach assaults with the skiffs. Always a surprise maneuver.

  Mountainous, with two shallow ripples of hills paralleling the coast. The outer one captured all the moisture blowing inland, so it was green and lush, with citrus fruit mutations growing wild. The inner one, forming the first valley, was drier, brown for the most part. The area inland of that was a basin that channeled briny creeks into salt lakes before draining into the aquifer underneath and turning pure again once it got down through a few layers of sandstone and other things.

  Thirty-five kilometers up the coast, where the climate got nicer, they had laid the cornerstone for the new city of Commencement. Sixth Ala, with all the earth-moving equipment, plus a few heavy tanks with dozer blades, was busy cutting a road grid for wheels and tracks, and the second starport. That was the big one that would handle DropShip-class deliveries for the Army, and medium freighters once the colony was large enough to take them.

  Today, maneuvers. Because they were down in that basin inland, a patch of desert surrounded on all sides by mountains and a few passes, they could practice with live ammunition occasionally. Not so much that they ran out, but enough to keep everybody sharp. Something about bangs kept the rust off the men.