by Blaze Ward
Barret was anticipating him, apparently. A good scout was like that. That really was an eyeball, and not a figment of his fright. The Golden Pearl had been punctured by the first shot.
Gunter cut loose with a laser scalpel scaled up to hunt planets. The screen forward lit hard and then dimmed as the filters cut in, but he was flying into a hurricane made of light, rather than rain.
The signal stabilized. IFV Butterfly was low, but not as much as he had thought. Still enough to miss.
He left the engines screaming for mercy and channeled remaining power into the gyros, letting their spinning mass jerk his horse’s head up and her ass down. His console flickered hard with a grinding thump that probably suggested things breaking aft.
Didn’t matter. The beam was still on, and was tracking, a knife carving an orange open as he watched.
Something jolted hard through the ship. The overhead lights flickered once and then stabilized.
“Incoming fire,” Ainsley said conversationally. “Rear and flank shields at forty percent.”
“Can you reinforce them?” Gunter asked.
The answer didn’t really matter. Either she would and they survived the next shot, or she didn’t and they died.
He concentrated on keeping his eyeball and a god’s in perfect alignment.
Somebody was going to die today. Hopefully it would be a machine.
And more importantly, that bastard would be alone on his journey to hell.
“Tertiary explosions detected,” Ainsley’s voice suddenly found emotion.
She almost sounded like him, up an octave.
He could only dream. Tertiaries suggested success. Victory.
Deicide.
Another massive bang rocked through the ship. All the overheads went out, plunging the bridge into a darkness lit only by the six consoles.
“Confirm tertiaries forward?” Gunter called into the yawing mouth of death about to take a bite out of them.
“Confirmed,” Ainsley replied sharply.
“Moirrey, blow the butterfly,” Gunter yelled as loud as he could.
“Stan’by,” Lady Moirrey said.
On his screen, the river of light vanished. Around them, the hull crunched and pinged in a new way as the various clamps and handles all blew at once.
The sad remains of Gunter’s first command broke into two pieces with a sound like a bell tolling the faithful to a funeral service.
The original ship, now just a cockpit, engineering, and engines, broke free and accelerated like mad, suddenly eighty-four percent lighter as they pushed. She wasn’t much heavier than the original courier that had once belonged to Princess Kasimira, and reacted like a fawn on a pretty day, racing to beat the wind.
Somewhere aft, a red alarm appeared on one of his consoles, but he was too busy trying to maneuver to even look at what had gone wrong. Explosions on the screen in front of him were more important, anyway.
Gunter slewed the nose around on the gyros, trying to get as much distance as he could before the scuttling charges went off behind them.
Somewhere aft, a Hammerhead helped, as a beam seemed to ignite the third section of the Type-6 beam, where all the generators had been built into a ring to punch power forward as fast as that firehose could handle it.
The explosion was a physical thing as much as pretty lights on display. The entire hull crunched with what felt like physical impacts and plasma cloud, but he couldn’t tell if the shields had held or not. Or even if Ainsley had managed to get a new barrier of shields up. Maybe that explosion was flaying naked hull, and they were about to be turned into hamburger.
Another crunch. More serious. Lights and alarms sounding.
If he stayed any longer, they’d be dead.
Gunter slammed his hand down onto the JumpDrive controller and prayed.
Chapter LXXIX
Date of the Republic July 12, 403 IFV Indianapolis, Mansi
She had an entire warfleet at her fingertips, and Jessica was still thinking like a cat burglar. Mansi had been a secret prison facility before. Phil Kosnett and his people had reduced it to a junkyard after they got all the friendly men off the surface.
They had time, so Jessica had gathered all the commanders aboard Indianapolis, into that big conference auditorium aft where they could have a working lunch and mingle. If all went well, this might be the last time this force was all in one place together.
If all went well.
According to the timelines sent by Em, Ainsley’s ship should have gotten there by now. Done their scouting. Perhaps unleashed the future.
But Winterhome was too far away to know for some time, even at the incredible speeds that Buran’s ships could manage on the Pochtovyi Trakt, the path of beacons through the thinnest parts of the galaxy.
She could only hope that Moirrey and her team had been successful. And managed to live to tell the tale. There would be no news until a messenger arrived at Osynth B’Udan and that was sent out to find First Expeditionary in the field.
If they ever knew.
Even with the ability to cross the galaxy in short periods, there was still a serious lag with the distances involved. Anyone she fought at Mansi would have no more clue about home front developments than she did.
Jessica looked over the room from the corner where she had snuck in, Marcelle quietly in tow. Iskra and her two escorts were off raiding, but everyone else was present, including Hans Bransch and Ballard. Command Centurion Larsen Romanov was even here, representing the Salvage Cruiser Bulldog, universally known as the Junkyard Chihuahua. His team would be central to the coming affair.
Marcelle leaned close to whisper in her ear.
“I miss Pint-sized,” she muttered.
“Me, too,” Jessica said. “So much of this wouldn’t be possible without her and Yan. Plus, they’ll never forgive us when we have to leave any ships behind. They’d both want to spend months trolling hulls for interesting tidbits.”
“We’ll just have to make sure we steal all the good stuff, then,” Marcelle straightened up.
Around her, the men and women of her force were circulating and idling like a single team, rather than the oil and water it had been when she first brought them together. Tom Provst and Galen Estevan were sharing a story with Ariadna Mateu off CE-402. Phil Kosnett was holding court, describing the system layout, from the way he gestured.
Unlike the others, Jessica had instructed Phil to bring with him Heather Lau, Siobhan Skokomish, and Andre Gave to this event. Granville Veitengruber commanded his own boat, so had been invited.
But Jessica wanted all the raiders here to talk. Each of them had commanded warships in Her Majesty’s service while at Mansi, so they had unique perspectives. Looking around, each seemed to be the crystal around which groups were slowly forming. Listening to them talk about what lay out there, just a lightyear away.
Enej appeared from out of the crowd as if summoned.
“Ready for everyone?” he asked as he stepped close, standing off to her left side, where he could turn in place and be beside her if she took a step forward.
Just as Marcelle would be on her right.
“Are they?” she fired back.
Enej grinned.
“We’re pretty close to lies and tall tales at this point,” he noted. “Dirty jokes and sea stories in another five minutes if you don’t put a stop to it right now.”
She laughed with him. She would miss this. It had a feeling of finality, even if this wasn’t an assault on Samara or Ninagirsu. It was just supposed to be an out-of-the-way place, generally uninhabited and forgotten.
She didn’t believe it for a second. Kali-ma had been too big in her dreams, after ignoring her for years.
“Round them up,” she finally said.
True to form, Enej put two fingers in his mouth and whistled like a tea kettle. Heads turned, and bodies began to filter over to the tables on the far side of the room. In another chamber, stewards would take that as their signal to bring l
unch to ready. Today it was pastas and sauces, with a variety of protein options to be added. Easy enough to prep ahead of time and cover for need.
Her need had arrived.
Jessica moved to the lectern at one end of the space. There wasn’t much to say that they didn’t know at this point. Hans Bransch had sat well out and listened, but there hadn’t been any ships in the system. If Captain Exeter wasn’t as amazing as Elzbet Aukley at hard scouting an enemy planetary system, he was still exceptional. And Ballard’s team had complimented Exeter’s on their care and detail, so Jessica felt comfortable with the outcome.
“As you sit and eat, there will be packets, delivered waterproofed,” Jessica announced to a general chuckle.
It wasn’t a meeting until someone spilled something. Coffee, water, juice, or wine. Or even pasta sauce at this moment. But all the briefing packs would survive.
“The target, as you know, is Mansi,” she continued. “Specifically Mansi-B, since we know there are also ships to be had at Mansi-D. CS-405 and her squadron scouted it on two occasions. First to steal Persephone. The second time to liberate the camp. There is a boneyard of old C- and D-class boats on a moon of the fourth planet, but we’re more focused on the wreckage accumulated in the Mansi-B L4 and L5 LaGrange points. Open your packets to exhibit two.”
She waited while everyone caught up. She had already memorized the entire contents, so she felt comfortable working without notes. The rustles subsided. The curses and such lasted a bit longer.
“Yes, as you can see, there are a number of Imperial warships that have been captured and deposited here,” Jessica said. “Kosnett’s team was already stretched too thinly at the time to do more than a rough catalog of them, in the hopes that they could bring back help later. That’s us.”
“Kosnett, did you really find IFV Rendsburg here?” Reif Kingston suddenly asked across the space. “She was the first ship I served on, as an ensign.”
“We think so,” Phil replied. “I sat as close as I dared and took images of the carcasses. Occasionally we were able to see the names painted on bows.”
Reif looked at her now with a new light in his eyes. The man had been personally selected by Tom Provst to serve as the commander of her flagship. It required intellectual flexibility as well as stubbornness.
They worked together well enough, but he wasn’t Denis Jež. Still, something changed about the man. Grounded him in an emotion, an anger that hadn’t been there before.
Perhaps he envisioned the men who had been killed or captured when the ship was taken. Men he knew. Friends he had lost.
Fire passed between them now.
“As you know,” Jessica continued, “not all of these ships were captured at places like Samara, although that is the origin for the bulk of the ones we have been able to identify. The C-class hulls like Persephone never served with the warfleets, so they were captured out of their native systems. Buran can do that, if they prepare for it. I have replicated some notes from Seeker in Appendix Seven. They have a repair transport we’ve never encountered in combat, but it can wrap around a damaged ship and use its own JumpDrives to haul a vessel to a safe repair location, or dry-dock. We presume that’s how these ships ended up here. The men were removed, and the hulls dumped at Mansi.”
“And we think they are flyable, First Centurion?” Robbie spoke up from his table.
“We do not have the slightest clue, Robbie,” she replied. “What I have are several thousand spare hands and the Chihuahua to see what we can do about that. It is my expectation that many of them were forced to surrender because of damage at places like Samara. The crews went elsewhere, and the ships came here. Phil Kosnett has a theory that The Eldest’s top Warriors would want to keep two of every class they encountered, to confirm statistics and capabilities. I would want those in good enough shape to be able to compare.”
“And then?” Alber’ d’Maine spoke up.
He had the fire in his eyes. He always had that fire. Kigali had developed it later. Reif Kingston was blowing on the first embers, but Alber’ was the Destroyer of Worlds.
“And then we repair as many as we can and take them home,” Jessica said plainly. “I cannot imagine that the group will be in good enough shape to take a run at someplace important on the way to Osynth B’Udan, even if we treat them like fireships.”
In the distant past, Drake had damaged a Spanish fleet by letting a burning, wooden ship drift right into the moorings, spreading destruction. It hadn’t been enough to stop Philip II of Spain from launching his Armada, but it was still legendary.
Plus, launching the vessels through JumpSpace would kill any chance at the kind of snooker accuracy you needed to knock balls around the table. You would have to ride it into point blank, and then either die with the ship or abandon into lifeboats above an enemy planet.
She wasn’t about to even ask for volunteers for that kind of suicide mission. She would still end up with thousands of men who should have gone home. Or on to colonize Lighthouse Station.
“Pity,” Alber’ offered, showing exactly where his mind had gone. “Are we expecting trouble here?”
The smile was back on his face. Kigali’s as well. And Denis and Tom Provst. And others.
But they wouldn’t be here if they weren’t forward-leaning. Willing to sail into harm’s way.
“No,” Jessica replied.
Before anyone could speak into the space, she continued.
“But I have my premonitions,” she said, eyes locked with Denis now, before she rotated through the men and women.
A few of them had been with her at First Petron and First Ballard. Denis, Robbie, Alber’, Tamara, Kigali. They had heard the stories, or seen how Jessica had changed.
There had been rumors that the Goddess herself had touched Keller. Altered her in ways that let her out-think the Red Admiral at First Ballard and fight off a much larger squadron with her pitiful force. Defeat them cold.
That legend had carried her forward.
Now it had brought them all to Mansi.
Denis nodded minutely, always intending to put himself between her and harm. The others would do the same, going beyond the job and the mission and walking into hell itself.
“With that in mind, I am dividing the fleet back into squadrons,” she said. “Appendix Five. Indianapolis will join Provst’s Second Squadron and the transport section. Hans Bransch will attach to First Squadron, giving Denis all the scouts, with an expectation that the force will be in hiding. Mansi-D and Mansi-E are good places to sit quietly. At the same time, the normal landing zone north that Buran prefers should be watched with at least one scout, perhaps two, so that both squadrons can be warned.”
“A trap, then?” Galen Estevan spoke up.
“The best kind,” Jessica replied. “Jessica Keller giving orders over a clear channel, with her escorts scattered all over the place.”
“Permission to grab Persephone and Veitengruber?” Denis asked. “We can put people down on the surface and look at what we can steal or fix. And do it quietly while we wait.”
She turned to the newest commander. Found him sitting next to Andre Gave, CS-405’s Nurse, of all people. Veitengruber’s scowl was a close approximation of what Alber’ wore right now, but he nodded.
“Granted,” she said. “In my perfect world, Buran forgets that there was ever a reason to be at Mansi, but I want all of you prepared to unleash the hounds of hell on very short notice, so run at the second highest level of alert you’ve got, as long as we’re in system.”
In her perfect world, she just sailed in and performed the greatest act of Grand Theft Starship in recorded history.
Jessica didn’t believe it for a moment.
Chapter LXXX
Date of the Republic July 16, 403 CS-405, Mansi
Phil let the lightest touch of greed swim through his system as he watched. By now, a message had made it all the way back to Ladaux, informing Petia that the lost duckling had made it home safely.
Depending on the men and women empaneled, Phil figured he had a fifty percent chance of being fêted as a hero, or being cast out as a fool.
But he wasn’t at Osynth B’Udan awaiting the messenger. Tom Provst knew the rules just as well, most likely, and had ordered the newly-repaired CS-405 back into the field to accompany his force, first raiding Severnaya Zemlya, and then on to join Jessica.
Petia’s orders would catch up with them, but only eventually. And then he would return home.
Even if the Court Martial found in his favor, which he expected, the others still had to face theirs. He would never have this team together again. Phil was sure of that. Heather deserved her own command. Siobhan might even get jumped to her own corvette, depending. And Andre had made noises about recertifying for Command School, suggesting that his time in command of Forgotten Mercy had left an indelible mark.
Phil let a daydream float by. Him in white, as a Fleet Centurion, in command of his own raiding squadron, like Jessica had once done. Plunging deep into Lena sector. Or perhaps long-sailing across Buran to locate the semi-mythical NovLao and let them know that there were others out there who would help.
He checked the clock and took a drink of fresh coffee from his sippy cup. Phil wasn’t supposed to sit watches on the bridge, even by his own standards. He should be doing paperwork in his office.
But he knew an ending when he saw it. A man’s days commanding any ship are always numbered, and Phil could see how short this count was, until the day soon when he never walked CS-405’s decks again. So he was going to revel in every day. Wallow in it.
