by Blaze Ward
Vo laughed with the man.
“Okay, you have about a week before we hit orbit,” Vo said. “Jessica will have one more meeting of the commanders at that point, before she kicks the door in. You’ve got until then to come up with a new set of instructions for how we clean out Barnaul when we hit dirt.”
Alan stood and saluted, cackling madly.
“Still planning on leading with the alien invasion, General,” he grinned. “But then the shit gets silly.”
Vo just shook his head as Alan departed.
Reese stuck his head into the office a few moments later.
“Dare I ask?” Reese inquired, glancing back up the way that Alan had left.
“Alan wants to hit the place like pirates, rather than avengers,” Vo offered in a light voice. “Liberate the mine, then steal all the heavy equipment so we can start our own Construction Ala.”
“And the city itself?” Reese’s eyes showed some concern now.
“Blow up the police station and commit graffiti elsewhere, but leave them alone,” Vo replied. “He thinks there is too much risk that we cause mass starvation if we do anything larger or more violent.”
“I see,” Reese’s face went neutral. “And what will the First Centurion say?”
“It’s my planet,” Vo growled. “She gets us to orbit, but I command inside the atmosphere. And I like the idea. Less destruction. More confusion.”
“Yes, sir, General,” Reese snapped to at the tone in Vo’s voice. “My orders?”
“Get with Alan and figure out what we might steal from the orbital images CS-405 captured,” Vo said. “Then figure out where we might stash it all, once we do steal it, keeping in mind that all of our equipment has to be packed in as well.”
“Dieter Jost has deck space not being used right now,” Alan suggested. “If we leave enough space for one DropShip to get in and out, we can put a lot of stuff there. We’ll have to haul everybody back to Lighthouse to unpack, though, instead of sending the transport directly to Osynth B’Udan.”
“If they’re our people, they won’t mind that much,” Vo decided. “And if we’ve freed criminal prisoners that want to work, we can put them to the task of building Commencement.”
“Is this where I suggest you’re crazier than he is?” Reese had the slightest grin on his face.
“Nope,” Vo got mock-serious. “We are conducting psychological and economic operations against our enemy, Command Decurion. According to Lady Moirrey’s favorite poet: All’s fair in love and war.”
Reese nodded and withdrew, chuckling.
Vo found himself alone in his tiny office. The room was definitely lighter, like someone had turned the gravplates down twenty percent. He hadn’t realized how much the thought of annihilating Barnaul’s population had been weighing on his soul.
He knew that it was an expectation, given the very purpose of the 189th. Be the sword that cuts the enemy to the quick. Kills them.
But he could kill their minds and their spirit just as easily as he did their bodies. Just steal their economy and make it prohibitive to start over again. Let the Sentient beast at Winterhome either pay to deliver new stuff, or pay to withdraw all the people and move them to another colony.
It was like what Jessica did to the Red Admiral the first time, back at 2218 Svati Prime. A good role model, too, if she got tetchy about his plans.
Precedent.
He didn’t always have to do whatever it was everyone expected of him. Vo zu Arlo could do something because it was the right thing to do for him and his men, without sacrificing anything.
That brought Vo up short. He hadn’t planned to go there, but she was in his mind, clear as if she was seated in the chair Alan had just vacated.
Kasimira.
There would have been an expectation that Vojciech zu Arlo would do the right thing and marry the woman, but she had freed him to pursue his own path.
She had asked the question nobody had ever asked. No, that wasn’t true. Two other men had asked him, at critical points in his life.
“What do you want?”
Senior Centurion Phillip Navin Crncevic, aka Navin the Black, the lunatic Viking badass that had stood a young punk up on his deck. A kid fresh from basic and fleet training, as opposed to starting his second year in jail.
Navin had asked him what he wanted. The words had come out of nowhere.
“To serve.”
They weren’t part of the training. Marines obeyed. Did whatever someone told them to do.
But he had wanted to serve. So Navin had given Vo the training and responsibility as rapidly as he could handle it. Sent him off to study Aikido and Kenjitsu, just to give the city kid a different way to look at the world.
Taught him how to hold a bow. How to master it. Eventually, how to shape his own.
“One of these days,” Navin kept reminding him. “You and a knife against an entire planet. Learn to survive, to thrive, to win. Go.”
He had survived. He had thrived.
What did winning look like?
A tall blonde with piercing blue eyes stared back at him and smiled.
The Primus Pilus had been the other man to ask Vo what he wanted. Alan had understood the circumspective questions other Imperials had been asked. Where they led.
What someone might want to suggest, without ever suggesting.
Even then, Vo had had to get Alan half-drunk to get the story, but Alan had apparently snarled at no less than Torsten Wald.
“Have you ever asked Vo what he wants?” like so many others might have.
But Alan had taken it another step.
Drawn a line in the sand and said: “This much I know. The rest you have to handle, because he doesn’t know, even if you ask.”
They had first met at Command School, when Emmerich zu Wachturm decided to turn the reformed cat burglar into a General. Alan had impressed the hell out of Vo. Still did.
Might be the only true friend Vo could call such.
That was weird.
What did a man like Vo do after the war ended? Did he resign everything and go home to Anameleck Prime to live on his pensions? Open a bar or a bookshop or a dojo? All three under one roof?
Did he look for an even greater challenge? Was there a greater challenge? Life around her would never be dull.
Because she had also understood that making demands would be the wrong thing to do. She could ask, and do so politely. Or she could order things, and watch him slip through her fingers like sand.
So she had asked. Pled her case like a woman, not an emperor.
Wanted him because he made her feel safe.
Him.
The ugliest duckling to hatch. As well as the meanest, toughest, orneriest one, so he supposed that there was something to him making people feel safe.
He studied her in his memory. That evening in her personal chambers, with Moirrey half-hiding off to one side so as to not distract.
Tall and blond, like so many Imperial ladies. Blue eyes from her father, Karl VII. Muscles, too, in a culture where women were supposed to be lithe and unathletic.
Undoubtedly female. Unapologetically, as well.
Smart and wise beyond her years. An artist who painted and composed in her free time. And he had listened to everything she had ever written.
A second woman appeared next to Casey, almost her opposite in every way.
Cohort Centurion Rebekah Kim, except she was a legate now.
Thirty centimeters shorter than Casey, but hardly any lighter. Compact and intense. And abrasive as hell to everyone, but that was a factor of holding up a meterstick and finding almost everyone came up short.
Even he had, eventually. Or rather, he had held her at arm’s length long enough, unable to open himself to the woman for reasons he couldn’t explain, even today. And that had been enough for her to give up on him.
But they would have been fire and water, had he taken her up on the offer. Magnificent, but combustible. Destructive in all the
wrong ways, regardless of their personal chemistry.
She made an interesting comparison to Casey. Just as smart. Just as driven. Probably as tough.
But not as feminine. Rebekah was too much in direct competition with Vo on all things.
Yes, that was why it had never worked. Would never have worked.
Rebekah was competing with everyone, all the time. Keeping score, and forcing everyone into a place, either ahead of her or behind. And those behind weren’t worth considering.
Would they have spent an entire life competing?
Would that have been any fun at all, or would it have worn on him eventually?
Casey would not compete. Could not. She was Emperor and had very strict official lines that she could not cross, regardless of her personal desires. She would be herself when she wasn’t in public: the artist, the composer, the free-thinker, the revolutionary.
Emperor Karl VIII wanted a place where she could cast off the Imperial mantle and be safe.
Didn’t we all?
And there were no rules for a Prince Consort, or whatever such a title might be. There had never been one before, because every ruler of Fribourg had been a male, going back to the kings of Fribourg itself, when it was a nation on a planet, before it became everything.
There was freedom there, as well.
He could be anything he thought was right, and nobody could argue with him because there were no rules about what right was.
He could be himself. Whoever he ended up being. And have her strength in those times when he needed it. When the nightmares wouldn’t go away.
When he was back on Alexandria Station trying to save the universe, and kept getting shot. Or chasing a ghost on Thuringwell as his men and women died in ambushes he couldn’t prevent.
That might be what winning looked like.
“You alive, sir, or should I call a medic?” a voice intruded.
Rebekah vanished before his eyes. Casey transformed into Reese Borel.
Vo blinked. Blinked again. Shook his head and rubbed his eyes.
“I went deep,” he muttered.
“Noticed that,” Reese said sarcastically. “Came in, started to talk, and you didn’t even realize I was here. You back now?”
“Think so, Reese,” Vo said, shaking his head a little to make sure the bolts in his neck were still tight enough that his head didn’t fall off.
“You look like someone pulled you backwards through a knothole, Vo,” Reese said. “Should I have Alan beaten up after this?”
Vo laughed. It felt good to laugh, so he let go some of the mad energy that had taken root in his stomach.
“No,” he finally said, after he got the edge of hysteria under control. “But we’ll make him buy the first three rounds.”
“Deal,” Reese said. “What the hell just happened, boss?”
“Maybe I just grew up, Reese,” Vo replied. “It happens.”
“I hope not,” the man countered. “Grown-ups don’t have nearly as much fun as kids.”
Vo laughed again, but this was just warmth, not craziness.
“Then obviously, you’re doing it wrong, Command Decurion,” Vo decided. “What were you talking about before, when I was ignoring you?”
“Nothing that can’t wait,” Reese suddenly rose. “You look like you could use a drink. Should I drag your ass down to the officer’s wardroom and get you at least mildly drunk?”
“No,” Vo decided. “But what you should do is set up a big dinner for everyone tonight. You, Iakov, Hans, Victoria, and the rest of Cutlass Ten. Alan and the Cohort Centurions. Tell the chef to make something special.”
“We celebrating anything in particular, Vo?” Reese asked.
“Being alive,” Vo replied. “And friends.”
Chapter LXIX
Date of the Republic June 20, 403 IFV Indianapolis, Barnaul
Jessica had reviewed the logs and notes from Kosnett’s team in greater detail than the man’s eventual Court Martial would do so, and probably with a more critical eye. After all, that Court would be a formality, given his own notes and the amazing outcomes.
If anything, he was likely to end up a bigger hero in Fribourg than at home in Aquitaine, when this was all done.
And his notes on the planet, added to those originally stolen from Nu Ulap Narah Kiel, gave Jessica everything she needed to know about the world they were about to drop on, except any changes that might have occurred in the last year to improve the defenses.
There had been none, then. Chances were that there would be none now.
She still looked up from the new assault plan Vo and Alan Katche had provided with a sour, nearly-disbelieving eye.
“Cat burglary?” she asked in a slow drawl.
Interestingly, the Primus Pilus across the desk from her grinned more than Vo did. Must have been his idea.
“Yes, Jessica,” Vo said simply. “We reviewed the original plans and determined that the level of damage we had planned would leave the colony non-viable, even over the short term, and that casualties from mass starvation risked being fifteen to twenty percent in the first three months.”
“That high?” she asked, flipping the document back to the calculations appendix.
“They don’t grow any significant crops there, First Centurion,” Alan interjected. “And couldn’t, given the arid nature of the area. Ranching might be successful, but that’s so far out of their current capabilities as to be negligible. We blow the warehouses or the power grid, and we might as well have just shot everyone out of hand.”
She could order that. And it would happen.
And every single one of these men would never follow her anywhere, ever again. Including Vo.
“So you’ll do more damage this way?” she pursued a different logic. “Steal everything instead?”
“I have it on good authority that random, psychological trauma can be a more effective tool when threatening a population,” Vo said with the faintest hint of a grin. “Especially if you can capture hospital ships in the bargain.”
Like she had once done at Second 2218 Svati Prime. Like Kosnett had done when he needed to repatriate a number of prisoners.
“And forming your own Construction Ala?” she pressed, letting her own grin ghost the room.
“I’m not sure we’ll keep it all,” Vo offered. “Alan’s in the wishful thinking mode with that part. But without that equipment, how viable is the colony? How much expense to replace it all, versus the cost of just abandoning the place and moving everyone somewhere else, in the middle of a war? This isn’t The Long Raid. This is Stanovoy on a larger scale.”
“I see,” she said, watching the two men.
Something had changed about them, but Jessica couldn’t put her finger on it. Both were more calm than she could remember them being, like planning this raid had taken them to a new level.
And she didn’t have a problem approving this change to the mission. Nobody would challenge Vo’s right to do whatever he felt like doing, down on the surface. Many might even see Moirrey’s hands in it. Project Mischief given a new direction.
“I can see one change you could make, if you started immediately,” Jessica offered.
Both men sat up a little taller, like they wanted to see what she could do to improve this.
“Mendocino and Duncan can both land on the surface,” she smiled at them. “Anything small enough to fit into one of their transport pods could be hauled off that way, freeing up space elsewhere. You just need to let me know and I’ll have them start rearranging pods now so that one of them can land with all the empties.”
Alan grinned, like he had just caught a canary. Vo nodded sharply and dove in on himself. Tactical thinking turned to strategic.
“Any other questions?” she asked.
Both men shook their heads.
“Then you have ninety-six hours, give or take,” she said. “CS-405 is down there scouting right now. Once Kosnett confirms the situation, we’ll drop everyone on the
m at once. And then it’s your turn.”
They rose as one and departed, chattering even before the door closed.
Marcelle came in a moment later and just stood to one side, silent.
“Do we know what’s changed about Vo?” she asked her long-time assistant.
“Nope,” Marcelle replied. “Looser than I ever remember that boy being.”
“At peace with himself?” Jessica ventured.
“Maybe,” Marcelle agreed. “He wasn’t like this at Thuringwell or Severnaya, so I couldn’t hazard a guess as to what improved in his life. Lately, he’s been Moirrey’s Mountain of Doom all the time.”
Jessica nodded. She could guess, but it would only be that. A guess.
And she wasn’t sure which way Vo had found peace. Nobody would until he said something out loud, and Vo was still the most private man she had ever known.
“Anything else I need to worry about, besides paperwork?” Jessica asked.
“Pint-sized and friends,” Marcelle suggested. “Is Barnaul a big enough target to get all eyes over here, or do we need to consider something drastic and stupid on the way home?”
“Besides Iskra?” Jessica asked.
“Nothing that woman does is either drastic or stupid, Jessica,” Marcelle tilted her head.
“Point taken,” Jessica agreed with a smile.
Iskra. Enough said.
It was tempting, with this much firepower handy. Go hit Laptev or Abakn, but neither of those worlds had anything worth blowing up, any more than Barnaul did.
There was only one place she could think of that would make a major stink. She had even considered it, but decided to take it at a later date.
But Em had wanted things ratcheted up hard.
And she had the crazy legend of Jessica Keller to live up to.
“Grab a seat,” Jessica said, keying the comm open and looking for the ship she wanted.
“Mendocino, Centurion Calkin here,” a woman answered quickly.
“First Centurion here,” Jessica said as their cameras synched. She watched the woman’s blue eyes get big. “I need you and RAN Duncan to determine who would be best suited to land with as many empty transport containers as possible on Barnaul, and how much extra food we’ve got, in order to make an unscheduled detour. Talk to your folks and get back to me directly, or my assistant Marcelle Travere. Questions?”
