Winterhome

by Blaze Ward

  “Signal from Hans Bransch,” Evan Brinich’s voice broke through Phil’s daydreams, grounding him back on his lovely, airy bridge. “Possible incursion detected.”

  Maybe something? Maybe nothing. Never a bad time to train his crew.

  “All hands to battle stations,” Phil ordered, locking himself down with the straps that had been loose before. “Eyes on target. Full stealth mode.”

  Siobhan and Heather were both in position in less than twenty seconds. Phil wondered if they had developed the same subconscious sensitivities to fate that he had. Yesterday, he would have been in his office right now.

  The connection to the other scout corvette was a tight-beam laser, like Phil’s team had used last year on their raids. Fleet signals were always encrypted, but still showed that somebody was there if you were listening.

  Here, just two rocks in the darkness, at least until someone hard-pinged their vicinity. A smart commander would come out at a safe distance from Mansi-B and at least look inward, where he would see a mass of ships currently scattered rather loosely across the L4, the gravitationally-stable, leading parking orbit where you could put something and it would wait a long time for you.

  “Oh, shit,” Evan’s voice was suddenly too loud. “That’s a full squadron, Phil. I read a Megalodon and at least six Mako hulls. We’re too far away to identify them, but whoever that is has enough force to hammer the shit out of Jessica and Provst, especially with surprise.”

  “Evan, tell Captain Exeter to run like hell,” Phil said. “Forget cover and get the message out that the redcoats are coming. Siobhan, get us to Denis now.”

  Evan was right. That was a big force for a little place like this. Briefly, he wondered if there was a spy somewhere, feeding Buran their movement orders, but they should have sent a bigger force, if that was the case. One Megalodon and six Makos was enough to take on Second Squadron and do a lot of damage, but then First Squadron would come in behind them and it would be kitty bar the door.

  If he could get the minutemen ready to fight.

  CS-405 twisted sideways into JumpSpace.

  Chapter LXXXI

  Imperial Founding: 181/07/16. IFV Valiant, Deep Space

  Tom Provst was not a deeply religious man, unlike some of his brother officers. He had seen too much and suffered too much to believe in a benevolent deity wishing his children to lead happy and productive lives.

  Various translations of Epicurus, one of the ancient Hellenes that Lady Moirrey liked so much, had resonated with Tom, and left him… Bereft was not the right term. Confused and angry?

  If there was a plan, why did it have to come off like this?

  But the quote spoke to his soul. Had grounded him at that moment when Crown Prince Karl Ekkehard Szczęsny was known to be dead, along with the rest of the bridge crew of Firehawk and all his friends.

  “Finally, if God is both willing and able to defeat evil, why then does it exist?”

  Tom didn’t find the Unitarian nature of Imperial religion helpful. Dualism had called his name that day.

  Evil existed because God was not all-powerful, but was engaged in a fight to the death with another being, a bastard just as powerful, and just as unrelenting, but dedicated to chaos and evil.

  Tom Provst would resist by fighting those people to his dying breath.

  He was in his office doing paperwork when the chime sounded.

  “Tom,” Charlie d’Noir spoke quickly. “Hans Bransch just came out of Jump. Says there’s a fleet right behind him.”

  “Action stations,” Tom said, standing. “Get every shuttle away from us and either to the ground or the closest repair station. RAN Bulldog drops everything and runs immediately. Don’t wait for Jessica to say anything.”

  “On it,” Charlie said in person as Tom exited his office onto the flag bridge that had become his second home.

  Charlie was already seated across the table, and the projection was coming live as Tom slid into his spot.

  “Is Jessica on-line?” Tom asked.

  “Not yet,” Charlie said. “She’s off on a flank right now, pretending to be an escort.”

  “Screw the cover story,” Tom decided. “Get Qin Lun over there. Pull the rest and the assault corvettes close to us.”

  The projection lit up with a secondary screen, showing the scan Tom’s scout had managed before they blipped out. It was not a pleasant thing to see.

  A Megalodon was as big and dangerous as Valiant. Six Hammerheads were more than a match for all his corvettes. Six Makos against his five cruisers, currently badly out of position to support each other.

  Tom felt a moment of guilt, hoping that the attack would come at this ship first. A smart commander over there might land three Makos each on one of the cruisers and try to cripple it. If their tactics went sideways enough, he might add the Megalodon onto a third cruiser, and Tom’s force would be savaged in the first thirty seconds of the battle.

  Hopefully Denis was coming, because this was going to be ugly and messy.

  Tom’s only other hope right now was that either the Buran commander had missed the scouts jumping out, or was taking his time and reconsidering attacking this force. Maybe he could even smell the trap before it closed.

  “Contact,” someone yelled. “Enemy warships incoming. Stand by to receive fire.”

  Tom felt a moment of savage glee, looking at the screens, as he realized that they had fallen for the trap planned by none other than Jessica Keller.

  That Megalodon commander was coming after Valiant, and had brought all of his Makos with him to try to kill the woman Buran considered the most dangerous creature in the galaxy. In that, they weren’t necessarily wrong, but they wouldn’t get her today.

  She wasn’t here, so her ghost wouldn’t join Ekke’s in Tom’s dreams.

  “All guns fire,” Tom ordered, just before the projection lit up with incoming beams and Valiant staggered like a horse that had been hit by a bus.

  Chapter LXXXII

  Date of the Republic July 16, 403 IFV Indianapolis, Mansi

  “Enemy warfleet coming out of jump,” someone yelled over the comm. “All hands to stations.”

  Jessica was up and moving, trying to identify the voice. She had served with Denis and his people for a decade before Indianapolis. She kept expecting Denis or Tobias Brewster, whenever she heard a man’s voice like that.

  It wasn’t Enej, nor Reif, but she didn’t spend much thought on it. That was a thing she could track down later. If she cared.

  The hull rang as both Type-4 beams cut loose at almost the same instant. The Type-1-Pulse batteries went like woodpeckers, as did the Type-3’s. The latter had all been tuned for short-range damage, so whoever it was at the other end hopefully was in the process of getting his teeth kicked in. Indianapolis was over on a flank today, escorting the corpse of IFV Rendsburg as various engineers tried to get the ship ready to fly. Or at least see if it was worth the effort.

  Jessica was onto her flag bridge a step behind Enej. Someone already had the projection live, showing her forces scattered out like bait, while a Buran battle squadron went after Valiant, Dundee, and Glasgow. She said a small prayer of thanks for predictable commanders, such as they were. It was still going to be a painful stay in a dry-dock, from the looks of things.

  She caught Reif’s eyes as she slid into the camera pickup. He perked right up.

  “Orders, sir?” he asked.

  “Get us close to Tom,” she said. “They think I’m over there, probably, so he’s the primary target and we need to pretend to be his escort, rather than his boss. What are we facing?”

  “A little more than they had at Severnaya Zemlya, Admiral,” he said. “Not enough for the fleet, but too much for the squadron.”

  In the background, the beams continued to fire. She wondered if that Megalodon was staying around to duel, or would flee once the element of surprise was lost.

  “Fight your ship, Captain,” Jessica decided.

  Let Reif handle
his men, like she had always let Denis have his head when it came time to combat. Kingston was good enough at his job to handle it. And there were only so many ways to handle a situation like this.

  Valiant was at the focal point of enough firepower that she feared the ship could actually be destroyed. Tom Provst might not mind that, if he could take them all with him, and he looked game to try, ignoring the Makos to pour everything he had down that monster’s maw.

  But it wasn’t going to be enough.

  Chapter LXXXIII

  Date of the Republic July 16, 403 RAN Vanguard, Mansi

  There was crazy, and then there was insane. Tobias Brewster hadn’t decided where this gambit fell on that spectrum, but it was nothing like he had been taught in the Academy. He had been forced to learn this one from Jessica Keller herself.

  How do you out-crazy a woman like that?

  “Stand by for Emergence,” Nada said aloud.

  “Gunner, I have laid everything forward,” Tobias said calmly. “Every beam is locked on a particular set of coordinates forward from our bow, but you’ll have to adjust them when we hit. I want everything you have fired into the biggest vessel, closest to center when you emerge. After that, we’ll dance with the rest of those bastards.”

  “Roger that, sir,” Aleksander Afolayan replied sharply.

  Tobias grinned at the man. When he had been disrated from the guns by Jessica, Aleksander had replaced him, and remained on as Gunner, even as Tobias became Emergency Tactical Officer aft. And now Acting First Officer of RAN Vanguard, answering to Nina Vanek, Acting Command Centurion while Denis was in his Fleet Centurion’s chair. At least until they got home and the Lords of the Fleet had words for them.

  But that was tomorrow. Today, he had perhaps the last clash of the greatest titans to fight in this generation,

  Emergence.

  All those hours of planning and programming tactical systems paid off. He had input coordinates and vectors, and let the system predict the optimal place from which to launch a Buran-style strafing run on Valiant.

  Vanguard was set to cross that Megalodon’s beam from exactly below. Ships like that didn’t technically have a blind spot straight down, but Tobias had never met a naval officer yet who didn’t have that blind spot somewhere in his thinking, until you pointed it out or exploited it.

  Well, Jessica didn’t. But she was Jessica.

  How many tournaments and war games had he won by coming in Zero, Ninety, Two-Seventy? Enough.

  Aleksander had that shark’s soft underbelly in front of him and a smile on his face when Tobias looked over his console at the man.

  “Firing,” the Gunner announced unnecessarily.

  Tobias had only to listen as his symphony of destruction raced into the night sky.

  Four Type-4 Beams, all centered. Ten Type-3s. Six Type-1-Pulse emitters yammering away.

  Tobias snickered when a probe went down-range in the wake of the Bubble Gun. At least he hoped it was a probe. They didn’t have any missiles back there, in spite of two launchers. Things like that were a waste of storage on this frontier.

  But a probe looked suspiciously like a completely unknown weapon system, if someone fired it at you instead of into a blank spot. Anything to spook the other guy.

  And all of that firepower would have merely scratched the Megalodon’s belly, except that Tobias has laid out the attack run he wanted, and then trusted the other crazies to follow Vanguard in.

  On his screen, Vanguard suddenly was leading a full battle squadron. First Expeditionary Fleet, as it had been for so long, plus new friends. VI Victrix and VI Ferrata on the close wings. II Augusta below. LWC Robert Fitzwalter above. It almost looked like the bow of one of the old Carcharias sharks, the battleship that carried four Makos into battle, rather than the newer Megalodon with six Hammerheads.

  CA-264 and CA-410 in two columns, leading CS-405, CM-404, CE-403, CE-402, and CE-401. The only one missing was CP-406, still off in the interior somewhere hopefully, madly pillaging.

  And everybody had targeted the flagship. Four more Type-4 beams and two Bubble Guns. And a thunderstorm of lesser beams, as the carrier and the Lincolnshire boat didn’t have the heavy firepower of the big cruisers. They made do with lighter stuff in greater numbers.

  Space is big. Even space battles are usually fought at distances measures in dozens or hundreds of kilometers, where the naked eye is useless to see anything but a flash of light.

  Vanguard was at the center of the whirlwind, with two of her cruisers at risk of being overwhelmed. Four of the Imperial corvettes were close enough to engage, but completely out-classed.

  Thirteen Buran warships were packed in tight enough that they appeared to be overlapping on the projection Tobias was using to track the battle.

  And he was leading twelve more ships in at high speed. It felt like ancient knights on horseback, about to slam into the wall of shields representing the infantry. For a moment, Tobias wondered if they might actually see two vessels accidentally ram one another, as everyone tried to respond to the overcrowding.

  Wouldn’t be the Megalodon, though, unless someone hit it. In his projection, the enemy battleship went red. Hopefully, that meant so much damage that the ship would possibly self-destruct when he could, rather than risk capture.

  “Emergency Bridge, this is Brewster,” he called, absorbing all the information as flight vectors he could see in his head. How they would move over the next thirty seconds. Sixty. Ninety. “Take over all beams rear and starboard, including Rachel and Zebra turrets. Gunner, get me that Tigershark off our port bow. That will be the one Alber’ goes after, so maybe we can help him kill it. Nada, signal everyone to slow down and engage targets as they lie rather than blasting through. And talk to the other pilots and find the safe corridors through.”

  Everyone acknowledged and Vanguard turned her attention to the scrum of insanity she had waded into. For the briefest moment, Tobias Brewster flashed back to Simeon and the most embarrassing day of his career. This would never erase that, but it might stack up with Qui-Ping for a job of redemption.

  Chapter LXXXIV

  Date of the Republic July 16, 403 IFV Indianapolis, Mansi

  Jessica might have called it Ragnarök. Or perhaps Armageddon. Not necessarily the Twilight of the Gods themselves, but certainly death on a massive scale. It might even be good enough for the Vedas, which Kali-ma no doubt would have appreciated.

  They had come for her. As she had known that The Eldest would do.

  And missed.

  Even to this date, no spies had apparently successfully reported to the appropriate authorities that Jessica Keller no longer rode into battle aboard a heavy dreadnaught, either Vanguard or Valiant. Nobody so much as spared Indianapolis a Flicker beam in passing, but that just meant that Reif and his crew could pour everything they had into the mayhem.

  Something caught her mind, as Vanguard and First Squadron emerged. Tobias Brewster and Nina Vanek had brought the whole team in on one of those mad charges that Alber’ d’Maine was famous for.

  “Enej, get me Hans Bransch or CS-405,” Jessica said suddenly. “They took the time to separate into Buran and Energiya modules, but somebody saw them. Let’s drop a force out there.”

  “On it,” her Flag Centurion said.

  She watched him type and considered the situation unfolding. Valiant wasn’t bait, exactly, but someone had needed to be visible while someone else hid. Tom Provst had drawn the short straw over Denis, only because all these wrecks were Imperial ships, so it made more sense to have trained imperial engineers working on them.

  So Valiant was the one getting hammered into salvage.

  And then Vanguard came out of jump like a wolf leading a pack, firing everything, one step ahead of everyone else.

  And a Megalodon died.

  It was amazing how quickly the tides could turn.

  “Jessica, I have coordinates from Hans Bransch,” Enej said suddenly. “Orders?”

  “Get Galen on
the line, transmit them to him, and we’ll go hunting,” she said. “Send that to everyone. We’re too far out of position to help the main force, and if we try to close, either they’ll jump out, or maybe jump on top of us. Let’s get gone.”

  Reif’s eyes got a little bigger in the image on her console.

  “You caught all that?” she asked.

  “Affirmative, Admiral,” Kingston said. “Standing by to jump, but I’m not sure what the value is.”

  “The Energiya Module has the long-range JumpDrives they use, Reif,” Jessica said. “Short-range, they use the Capriole, but that won’t get them to safety very quickly. Even if the Megalodon’s that badly injured, the Makos could still escape and bring help.”

  “And we’re going to kill them all,” he observed. It wasn’t a question.

  “That’s right,” she replied.

  “Qin Lun is ready to jump,” Enej interjected. “On your command.”

  “Take us out,” Jessica ordered.

  Chapter LXXXV

  In the Tenth Year of Jessica Keller, Queen of the Pirates: July the Sixteenth at Mansi

  None of these people thought like pirates. Except her. That was why Galen had come when David asked. Jessica would be surrounded by crazed berserkers and not thieves in the night. She would need someone whose response to a problem didn’t involve waddling up to an enemy warship and beating it to death with a frying pan.

  “Time to drop?” Galen asked out loud.

  His old 1-ring cargo Mothership, Marco Polo, had possessed an amazingly cramped and smelly bridge, even after Galen had paid to strip it to the bulkheads and replace most of the interior equipment. But those were the days before Pops and Bedrov. Back when ships could be hunks of junk with piss-poor life support as long as they got you where you were going.