Winterhome

by Blaze Ward

  “We offering anything useful, sir?” she asked.

  Trust Ames to be imminently practical. But that was why he needed her. A woman approached these things differently than a man.

  “Transport,” Vo said. “Clean records, if they’ve done anything that might have resulted in a prison sentence being commuted to service on Barnaul. Fresh start. And a chance to be on the winning side. Or at least be able to claim later that they were kidnapped at gunpoint.”

  “Okay, I’ll need to meet with some of the locals and gauge their attitude,” Victoria said. “Permission to borrow part of Cutlass?”

  “Street,” Vo turned and turned serious. “Take acting-Optio Ames and round up Cutlass One and Two. They’ll bodyguard her, and have Alan assign a full Patrol as her escorts while she’s in town.”

  Vo liked the way her eyes got enormous in her face as he spoke, and the implications registered.

  Acting-Optio. Lowest-level of the officer ranks. Official person in charge, and able to give orders to the men she normally listened to.

  But then a moment later she got as serious as he had been. Remembering the raid at Severnaya Zemlya, when she had taken charge of Street’s team and everyone had listened.

  Because they would. She was one of them, but they all saw in her that spark that might just turn her into a Primus Pilus one of these days. Or a Flag General with her own legion.

  She nodded, after remembering to shut her mouth. Street grinned, but his back was to her right now and he sobered before he turned to look at the woman soldier.

  Vo lifted up his glasses and stared at the distance again. The mine had been no more threat than the city, once Vo’s people demonstrated a willingness to meet any resistance with stupid amounts of violence.

  And that was about as good a lesson as most people needed in order to behave.

  Chapter LXXII

  Imperial Founding: 181/06/25. Barnaul City, Barnaul

  Acting-Optio. The words just echoed in her head as she walked. Around Victoria, Cutlass One and Two, plus Third Patrol, First Ala. One third of Alan Katche’s force. Taking on the entirety of Barnaul City.

  The place was eerily quiet. No vehicles were moving, except patrol skiffs. All the tanks and guns were at the mine, explaining politely to the people at the surface that they were no longer in charge and that all the people below would be free to leave.

  Victoria had to figure out how many more she could bring. Food wouldn’t be a problem. In addition to the freighters, Command Centurion Kosnett had stolen a mega-transport named Packmule, and Admiral Provst himself had ordered it filled to overflowing with long-term food stuffs, exactly for this mission.

  They could cram nine thousand humans on the troop transport easily enough. Ten thousand if they packed closely.

  How many of those would be females? Would any really want to go? What kind of fool would just throw away their entire history and walk into an unknown future at the drop of a hat?

  Victoria blushed furiously as the mirror in her mind laughed. She knew at least one. And that was good enough, she supposed.

  They had arrived at their destination. City Square was an entire zone, two blocks wide by a long block, left clear, with a park on two thirds, ending in a small amphitheater, and a paved zone for fairs and piroshky stands to do business.

  Third Patrol owned it right now, with all of their skiffs arranged guns-out and all the troopers only relaxed on the surface. She had been a soldier long enough now to understand how close to the surface violence was today.

  Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any other fools.

  A set of formally-dressed men and women were standing to one side as she approached. Victoria moved at the center of her own gravity well with Decanus Teagle and his men around her, as well as Cutlass Two.

  The locals wore Asian-style robes. Four layers of pretty in colors that got lighter the closer you got to the skin. Big, white sashes went around their waists, and were tied over the left hip in a huge knot. Completely impractical, but Buran was a society where thinkers were put in charge and doers listened to orders.

  Rather like the army, but education was only the entry point, not the destination. Victoria knew they were all more educated than she was, but not one of them had ever been to war. Seen the craziness. Done it.

  Killed someone with their bare hands.

  That settled her. They had age. She had experience. And several hundred violent men protecting her from all harm. She felt as tall as zu Arlo.

  Victoria paused as she got close enough to not have to yell at them. The inverted gold triangles she wore on her collar felt heavier than her carbine. Street had pinned them at her neck, signifying she was an Optio, an officer as far as anyone who met them could tell.

  She was in charge, right now. With everyone backing her, including Patrol Centurion Rikard Laferriere, a man almost old enough to be her dad.

  The oldest woman over there, standing in the center of the group, spoke. Victoria didn’t understand one bit of what she said, either. But another one of them was apparently the translator, because English came out of his mouth a moment later.

  “The, uhm, Mayor acknowledges your pirate raid, and desires awareness of when your barbarian hordes will be departing,” the man said politely.

  Victoria could only imagine what the actual words had been, or maybe they just had to guess at context, when crossing from Mongolian to English in one jump. Chinese might have made it easier.

  Or not. Maybe they were still pissed about what the RAN scout had done to them last time. Those folks had raided the place with a single freighter and a crew of twenty. She had an entire Rapid Assault Legion of angry men on call.

  Victoria smiled. Hans had taught her that smile. It was the one you used when you were sizing someone’s kidneys for a blade.

  The Mayor had apparently seen it before. She turned a little whiter than the soft yellow-bronze she had been before. And her eyes got bigger.

  Cutlass One probably would have growled, but they were too well-behaved today.

  “After we have destroyed your colony,” Victoria replied to the woman in a blunt, sweet voice, cocking her head slightly to convey the correct level of disdain at the mayor’s irrelevance.

  This is the 189th Legion, lady. They’re angry. You bombed them on St. Legier. Made them spend winter in the Death Zone. You’re lucky they don’t simply shoot everything that moves, down to the cats.

  “But first,” Victoria said before those folks could do more than register shock. “First, my orders are to survey the population of Barnaul City. The rest of the Legion will liberate all of the prisoners in the mine that wish to depart with us. I expect that to be several thousand men. Any women in town who also wish to depart with them may do so.”

  Victoria smiled as that got translated. Half the faces got angry. The other half turned still. This was almost easier than losing money playing cards with Cutlass Ten.

  “There is a new Imperial colony that is seeking immigrants desiring a fresh start,” Victoria continued in a brighter voice. “General zu Arlo has decreed that he will also accept applicants seeking to escape. Not all Buran colonies will be offered such a better future, when this legion arrives.”

  “So you will kidnap the women, as well as the men?” the translator managed to file off all the shrill edges from the mayor’s voice, getting as mechanical as he could.

  Probably didn’t want to get shot.

  “No,” Victoria said, going for broke. “We will land a number of troop ships and interview anyone who wants to leave. Not everyone will be acceptable, because I’m sure we’ll have to shoot a few spies trying to sneak aboard. But anyone who wants to leave can be free.”

  Bingo. Seriously, you folks need to play cards. Or learn that barbarian is a relative term. I’m sure you bitch and keep score over how someone holds their tea mug, don’t you?

  “Why would anyone want to join barbarians?” the translator left some emotion in the question.

  �
�Because we’re winning,” Victoria fired back snidely. “And because you keep slaves, so we’re going to rescue them and take them home. We don’t take slaves, ever. Even enemy prisoners are traded home, or occasionally just released without bond.”

  Victoria waited just a beat as that got translated, and the mayor took a deep breath to argue some.

  “And because you dropped an anti-matter bomb on the capital planet of my Empire,” she interrupted the woman’s breath, snarling and leaning forward. “On me. You killed fifty-seven million civilians by fire, ice, and starvation. I got to watch that fire wall pass overhead and feel the heat burn my hair. The men around me had to dig broken bodies out of collapsed buildings, as well as bury children, because you people place no value on anyone other than yourselves. Jessica Keller could have simply annihilated this planet from orbit with her war fleets. Could have ordered us to come down here and hunt you down like rabid dogs and shot every one of you in the street. And we would still owe you a debt. But we are better than you. More civilized. We will free our men and take them home. We will transport any women that would like to live in a more-civilized culture. You won’t even rot here after we leave, because we won’t damage your precious city more than we have to, in order to make a point. You’ll need power and food to survive until your worthless god can come rescue you.”

  Victoria fixed the woman with hard eyes as the words got translated. She expected a screeching howl of dismay and rage, rather like her mother might have done when faced with those words. Perhaps another physical assault.

  But the woman broke about mid-way through the translation. Victoria had been so wound up she wasn’t even sure which phrase went into the woman’s chest like a knife, but the old bitch sagged. Would have collapsed, but for the woman on the other side from the translator suddenly catching her and bearing the woman’s weight for a moment until she recovered.

  Victoria unclenched her hands and pushed her weight back off her toes. Stopped thinking about the extra knife in her boot and how quickly she might grasp it.

  Cutlass One and Two, and Third Patrol, did growl. It was a soft, angry noise. Rather like a plague of hornets in the distance, growing closer.

  Victoria took a deep breath and watched the ripples play out across the dozen or so people in that little cluster of humans.

  “I have only one question for you,” she said, lofting her voice like Iakov Street did when he wanted everyone to hear clearly. “Do you plan to assist me?”

  The mayor shook her head, rattled possibly beyond all rational comprehension. Like someone coming out to get the morning paper and fresh milk, and being confronted by a rabid giraffe in the front yard.

  Most of the rest of her staff was the same way. Broken by circumstances. But that was Victoria’s aim this morning, so she wasn’t displeased. They were angry and frightened.

  Emotionally overwhelmed, like a fifteen-year-old suddenly forced to grow up and fend for herself in an angry world.

  She turned to Patrol Centurion Laferriere and bored in on the man with her stare.

  “Lock them all up,” she ordered. “But isolate them from each other as well. I expect a few will waver, once they no longer fear immediate reprisals.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, nodding sharply.

  Victoria stepped back as a whirlwind engulfed the locals. She turned to Teagle on her other side.

  “I need someone who speaks Mongolian well enough to sound natural,” she said aloud. “And motor pool needs to either modify external speakers well enough to be heard cleanly at a distance, or mount some sort of public address system. Find out who can get the mass transit system running, and order them to add a route to the starport every fifteen or thirty minutes, running on a continuous loop until we are packing to depart the planet.”

  “What’s the plan, sir?” Teagle asked.

  “Broadcast an invitation to a better life,” she said. “Play it on every street as we patrol. Send them to the General to be sorted out. We get all the ambitious, adventurous ones. They get the old farts who aren’t willing to change.”

  “Will it work, sir?” the man asked.

  “Can you think of a better way to destroy your enemy?” Victoria asked.

  Chapter LXXIII

  Date of the Republic July 2, 403 IFV Indianapolis, Barnaul

  Jessica sat on her flag bridge and watched the projector show the last wave of DropShips climbing out of the atmosphere below her. Vo was on one of them, probably laughing right now. Victoria Ames would be close by, as would the other members of the unit called Cutlass Force. The inner circle of what had been the 189th Division, Mountain, before Thuringwell.

  The adamantine backbone of Vo’s Legion.

  At the end of the day, the mine hadn’t been as packed with foreign slaves as some of the larger, wilder estimates had selected. The total miner population was just under twelve thousand, heavily tilted towards male by the demanding physical tasks. A little less than half had been foreign-born. Interestingly, almost ten percent of them were from places neither Jessica nor her staff had ever heard of, other than the semi-mythical NovLao that had birthed Granville Veitengruber’s soon-to-be-husband Deni.

  Buran was physically larger than Fribourg, and more centrally located in the galaxy. It was still far away from the Homeworld of mankind, fabled Earth, but mankind had been out to the stars for over ten thousand years at this point. And Sentient terraforming ships had made a number of paradises for humans to land on in the early centuries, once they traveled far enough across deep space.

  Still, sixty-two hundred men had either been freed from captivity, or taken up the offer for colonization work on an Imperial world far from here. Interestingly, Victoria Ames had apparently been successful beyond her wildest documented fantasies and recruited more than five thousand women from the planet with the promise of a new life and many possible husbands on a distant colony.

  It had taken a lot of maneuvering to get everyone aboard, but Tom Provst had been the key player. Any navy man who could be validated and was willing got reactivated at his old rank and assigned to one of the warships. As a result, Jessica suddenly had three thousand spare hands scattered across her fleet, including serving with the men and women who had previously been their worst enemies, the Republic of Aquitaine Navy.

  Jessica brought her attention back from the projection and found her Flag Centurion’s eyes.

  “Get Denis, Tom Provst, and Vo on a conference line,” she said, thinking about how to move forward on this one.

  Enej nodded and began typing. Less than two minutes passed.

  “All set,” Enej pointed at her.

  The projection now showed the three most central players in the next act.

  “So the original plan had been to haul all the rescuees off to either Lighthouse Station or back to Osynth B’Udan,” Jessica said. “Would we gain anything pulling all the extra, ex-miners with us on our next assault? In addition to the sailors?”

  Everyone waited for Vo to comment.

  “Given the staffing that we’ve managed to cram everywhere else, IFV Dieter Jost isn’t all that crowded right now,” Vo replied after a few beats to consider. “My recommendation would be to have the transport fly around for a few extra weeks, like we were heading back almost to St. Legier, and then join me at Lighthouse, after I’ve gone straight there and spent those days building up Commencement. Going to blame Moirrey’s terrible precedent and invest some of my resources and prestige in factories and things there. Plus have the Legion earn some sweat equity by building. The Duke ends up with a working city faster, and the Crown doesn’t have to send as much money to the new colony as fast.”

  “Do you foresee any security issues, zu Arlo?” Provst asked in a dark voice.

  Jessica was amazed at the smile Vo showed the admiral.

  “I’m on the ground, Tom,” Vo grinned. “With a Legion. If we’ve got a problem, they’ve come through the Imperial Fleet to get to me. That makes it your fault.”

>   “Point taken, Vo,” Tom volleyed, showing his own smile. “What about long term?”

  “Well, we promised five thousand women access to more than six thousand men, but we’re only delivering about half that,” Vo replied. “So it would be nice if you brought the rest soon, or had Em deliver me a few thousand more when we send the transport home.”

  “That’s my next mission, Vo,” Jessica said. “While you’re homesteading, I intend to try to break Buran’s will in this sector once and for all.”

  “You think we actually can?” Denis spoke up now. “I appreciate Stanovoy and Yenisei led us to both iterations of Severnaya Zemlya. Will Mansi actually be that important?”

  “It shows that we have the moral high ground again, Denis,” she replied. “We could have bombed their worlds from orbit in retaliation, and yet we tell them that we’re better than that. We could have eradicated the colony world below us, and instead just settled for a jail break, leaving the place largely intact, while taking a little under ten percent of the total population away with us. People will ask why Mansi was a target, and The Eldest will have to explain. I’m taking minds away from him. That’s the only way to beat a god.”

  “And perhaps he’s too focused on us carving a hole in his defenses in Altai sector,” Tom said. “Meanwhile, something terrible happens elsewhere. As you folks have taught me, he is a logical beast, capable of responding only to a probability matrix, rather than dreaming big enough. Our job is to distract him from the important things. We’ve liberated old warriors on Barnaul, now we’re going to do the same at Mansi. He won’t understand, but his people will. And they will wonder.”

  “Good enough,” Denis agreed.

  “Vo, I’m guessing you’re about an hour from docking?” Jessica asked. “How soon after that can you depart?”

  “Five minutes,” he smiled at her. “This is an RAN Assault Carrier. I was the last foot on the surface, right after Victoria Ames boarded. We’ll go as soon as the locks engage.”