A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2)

by Sales, Ian

  Someone aboard Empress Glorina waved. Lieutenant Pulisz returned the gesture.

  “Are they really so stupid?” Ormuz asked.

  Surely they could see that the two dozen or so crew waiting in the loading bay were not Kantara’s?

  “They think they have nothing to fear, my lord,” Pulisz replied.

  The Provost-Aboard had not left Ormuz’s side since they had captured the cruiser’s captain.

  The two warships were about twenty feet apart now. One of Empress Glorina’s petty officers hurled a coiled rope. It unrolled across the gap, its weighted end flying through Kantara’s force-curtain and hitting the deck with dull thud. A rated picked it up and made it fast to a bollard.

  “How far now, do you think?” Ormuz asked.

  Pulisz cocked his head. “Perhaps ten feet, my lord.”

  Ormuz’s heart began to beat faster. He put his hand to the hilt of his sword to stop it shaking. He waited… a second. Let her drift a foot or two closer…

  “Now!” he yelled.

  He ran at the loading hatch. And leapt. Pushing off from the deck as hard as he could. Eyes closed, mouth shut. Fierce cold struck at him, seemed to drive picks of ice into his ears. He felt the skin of his face began contract and turn numb.

  And then he was across.

  He flew through Empress Glorina’s force-curtain. Snapped his eyes open as he felt warmth sting his cheeks and set the tips of his ears aflame. He hit the deck and landed more heavily than he’d expected. His ankle jarred and he ran on almost out of control.

  More thumps sounded around him as Vengeful’s boarders rained down on the deck.

  Ormuz had his sword out now. He spun about, looking for the officer in charge. There he was, a mate, by the chamber’s exit, loudly demanding an explanation. Ormuz ran up to him.

  “Your parole,” he demanded.

  “Who in hells are you?” the mate replied angrily.

  “A boarding party. From Vengeful.” Ormuz gestured impatiently with his sword. “Now give me your parole. Or fight.”

  Someone fought behind Ormuz. It did not last long. Then further thumps and scrapes as more of Vengeful’s crew made their way across from Kantara.

  The mate detached his scabbarded sword from his belt and, bending down, laid it at his feet.

  “Pulisz!” called Ormuz.

  The Provost-Aboard hurried up. “All secure, my lord,” he reported.

  The battleship crew in the chamber had all been subdued. Some were plainly dead, some were out cold, and half a dozen had surrendered. They were watched over by a pair of provosts.

  “I have your parole,” Ormuz told the mate. “Go over there and keep your rateds from interfering.”

  At the head of over eighty Vengeful crew, Ormuz led the way into Empress Glorina. Pulisz, who was familiar with the class, gave directions. Anyone they met en route, they fought—and killed or subdued. They ran along gangways, up ramps, charged into groups of enemy rateds, fought their way through hatches. In the battleship’s Great Hall—so much larger than Vengeful’s—they met a contingent of Empress Glorina’s officers.

  Ormuz found himself confronted by a pair of well-dressed midshipmen. Both were older than himself and, judging by their ornate swords, high nobles. They’d be skilled, then. But Ormuz was a master now—perhaps even better. Ahasz was a renowned swordsman and Ormuz was his clone.

  The two midshipmen pressed their attack but Ormuz had his blade up in time. They were not used to fighting as a pair: they copied each other’s moves, hoping Ormuz could not parry a pair of blades. He did not need to. He thrust for one midshipman’s left shoulder, forcing him to turn away. Towards his fellow. Now he was in danger of stabbing him. He lifted his blade. Ormuz lunged. The midshipman went down, blood jetting from his neck. The other let out a screech as red splashed against him. Stumbled. And slipped. He was dead before his shoulders hit the deck.

  Stepping forward, Ormuz saw Pulisz to his left, and Varä to his right. Someone moved in front of him and their blades clashed. Ormuz did not want to kill; he’d rather people did not have to die. But a fierce determination had come upon him and he could think only of felling all those before him. He relished the thrust and parry, lunge and riposte; the skill of it all, his mastery. He revelled in the blood and the smooth pistoning action of a point sliding into flesh to wound or kill. He grinned as his foes fell at his feet, as their eyes rolled up in their heads, as death took them.

  And he knew himself for a hypocrite.

  Empress Glorina’s conning-tower, like everything aboard this flagship, was bigger than Vengeful’s. Ormuz led the charge up to the Flag Bridge, feet thudding on the deck, the clash of steel, the wet slap of billy-clubs hitting flesh, of bones breaking and skulls splitting, the cries of the wounded and dying. Bodies fell from the gallery on each deck and floated like ghosts in the conning-tower well. Droplets of blood, vivid and red, drifted in clouds and, once over the galleries and within the influence of chargers, fell like heavy rain with wet smacking sounds.

  He burst through the last hatch. Pulisz had fallen somewhere behind him. At his back he had only three rateds. It was enough. A single man stood alone on the Flag Bridge, his back to the battle-consultant, his hands gripping its edge. His uniform was the most ornate Ormuz had ever seen. The epaulets and cuffs were thick with gold braid and lanyards of gold rope hung across his chest. He was tall, but portly, with fleshy features and a neatly-trimmed halo of black hair about a bald crown.

  “Your grace,” said Ormuz. “I have taken your ship. Surrender.”

  Admiral Risto umar Mishuan, Duke of Courland, sneered. “I’ll not give my word to a prole.”

  Ormuz turned to the rated beside him. “See if you can find Lieutenant Pulisz. Or any other officer from Vengeful.”

  Approaching Courland, Ormuz remarked, “You’ve lost your ship. And the battle. I don’t see that refusing to give me your word is going to help you.”

  “I’ll still not give you my parole.”

  Ormuz laughed. “You know what? I don’t particularly care. You’re my prisoner. I captured you.” He jabbed at the admiral with his sword. “Give me your sword, or I’ll get these two to take it off you by force.

  “And then, I think, I’ll have you thrown in your own brig.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Sappers had built a raised rampart of earth some two hundred yards back from the ridge and in its shadow Skaria set his command tent. Standing by a support-pole, Rinharte crossed her arms and watched the regimental troopers and Imperial Marines lining up for the first attack. The only blue uniform present, she felt an outsider amongst these brightly-coloured regimentals. She fought in enclosed spaces, never knowing when injury or death would strike. It fostered, perhaps, a false sense of invulnerability. But to run towards an enemy that was firing cannons seemed, in her eyes, an act of supreme courage.

  Or utter foolhardiness.

  Her gaze drifted to the tent’s interior, where Skaria and Marine-Captain Zaif mar Najib, Viscount Magnoon, briefed the officers. One of the Regiments had brought a battlefield-consultant, and cartographic lieutenants had mapped the surrounding area and loaded it into the device. The battlefield-consultant’s flat circular glass depicted the valley the Admiral and the Serpent were about to fight over. An unremarkable piece of ground, it had likely been little more than a minor suburb of ancient Swava. And yet these two armies battled here for a throne.

  She caught Kordelasz’s eyes. He grinned and raised his eyebrows in anticipation. He was eager to fight, although land battles were not the Imperial Marines’ forte. An Imperial Skirmisher lieutenant standing beside Kordelasz leant forward and put a hand to the marine-captain’s shoulders.

  Najib’s plummy tones drifted across to her: “… biggest worry will be those damned field-pieces the enemy’s brought onto the field. We’ve no choice but to take them out —”

  A Gromada Dragoons officer interrupted the marine-captain: “Orbital bom
bardment?”

  Najib shook his head. “The Admiral will have her hands full holding the high ground against the Serpent’s fleet. No, we’ll have to take them out ourselves.”

  Rinharte tuned the officers out. If only the Admiral had succeeded in winning an artillery regiment to her side, the battle would be more even. These thirteen thousand troopers and officers gathered here were not only out-numbered but out-gunned.

  Skaria’s voice rose out of the murmur about the battlefield-consultant: “We have one factor on our side: General Gwupek. The man’s a cretinous oaf. He’ll insist on command and his officers will have no choice but to follow his orders.”

  So much, thought Rinharte on hearing this remark, depends on personalities. The Admiral’s ground forces were outnumbered near three to one, but with an idiot in charge of the enemy their chance of victory improved. She had seen battles lost by a rigid adherence to the Fighting Instructions, by an inability to do what the situation demanded. It was a reason for the Admiral’s success: she believed the Fighting Instructions were out-dated and dangerous.

  A figure appeared beside Rinharte, startling her from her reverie. It was Kordelasz. She smiled guiltily at him. He ignored her faint embarrassment and said, “We’re calling the attack at one. That’s gives us another ninety minutes to get into position and around six hours of daylight to win the day.”

  “Very good.” Rinharte felt unconnected from the events around her. This was not battle as she understood it, and she found it hard to take onboard the incipient death and destruction. The marine-captain’s enthusiasm only strengthened the likeness to an adventure.

  “You’re staying here? With the major—sorry, army marshal?”

  “I hadn’t given the matter much thought,” Rinharte admitted. “Would I be any use in the fighting?”

  “You’re an officer, Rizbeka,” pointed out Kordelasz. It was explanation enough.

  “What about you? I expect you volunteered to spike the enemy’s field-pieces.”

  Kordelasz grinned boyishly. “Close. Najib has something much more daring planned.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s going to send up a dozen boats on high-speed parabolic trajectories that’ll bring them down in the middle of the enemy. Each one will be packed to the gills with marines. We’ll take them from the middle.”

  “Ah yes. It was mentioned earlier.” It was the sort of audacious madness for which Najib was known. It was also the sort of tactic which could throw the battle in the Admiral’s favour… or lose it entirely as each boat crashed and burned after coming under fire.

  “Why don’t you come with us?” Kordelasz asked. “We’ll be in the thick of it, you know.”

  “I would be more hindrance than help, Garrin. I have no talent for land war.”

  “You fought at Linna,” Kordelasz pointed out.

  “A handful of platoons. You can’t compare that with this.”

  “You’d be surprised. That fight on Linna makes you more experienced than some of the troops we’re fielding today. Against battalions detached from the Imperial Army Abroad.”

  In other words, the enemy’s forces were veterans and many of Skaria’s troopers had never seen combat before. It was not an encouraging thought.

  “Is it just me, Garrin, or is our chance of victory so slim as to be almost non-existent?”

  He grinned wolfishly. “Oh, it’s slim, Rizbeka. No doubting that. But we don’t have to win the battle to win the war. The Admiral is busy doing that above us. Without troop-transports, the Serpent’s army is trapped here on the ground.”

  “So why are we fighting?”

  “Because they’ve given us the opportunity to do so. And because it wouldn’t be a victory otherwise.”

  For Rinharte, it was not enough justification. “You go with your marines, Garrin,” she told him. “I’ll attach myself to the army marshal’s staff. Perhaps I can be of use.”

  “You’ll miss all the excitement,” Kordelasz admonished.

  “You’re incorrigible, Garrin.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  After climbing six decks up the conning-tower, the Admiral was surprised to find the gallery deserted. She looked up to the next deck, the Station Keeping Platform, but that too was empty. The hatch to the Flag Bridge, on the other side of the well, was shut. Lieutenant Gogos had been adamant Ormuz could be found up here. So that was where he must be.

  She gestured for her escort to remain on the gallery, rounded the well and pushed open the Flag Bridge’s hatch. She saw Ormuz standing at the forward bulkhead, gazing out through a scuttle. She had been given running reports of his progress through Kantara and then—unbelievably!—into Empress Glorina, the enemy flagship. Instead of the battered hulk she had expected to lead limping from the battle, she now had one of the largest battleships in the Imperial Navy.

  He must have heard her as she stepped over the coaming, for he turned round as she entered. “Flavia,” he said; and there was a level of familiarity in his voice she had not heard before. There was warmth in it too—enough to cause emotions from years past to threaten to resurface.

  She focused on her gratitude. That, at least, she owed to Casimir Ormuz, and not the man from whom he had been cloned. “I am… impressed,” she admitted. “You have done well.”

  His jacket was black with dried blood, and red caked his wrists and the backs of his hands. But he did not appear wounded. For that she was glad. More than she had expected.

  Once she had reached him, she took both his hands in hers. She felt the flaking blood on his skin. “You have put us in the history books, Casimir,” she said.

  “Put you,” he answered. “They’re already calling it the Admiral’s Patented Boarding Bridge. You won this battle, Flavia.”

  She dropped his hands and turned away to look about the chamber. She did not recall ever visiting aboard Empress Glorina. Their paths had not crossed. The Flag Bridge was a small enclosed space, no more than fifteen feet by ten feet, and narrower at the forward end than at the rear. Burnished wooden decking; and a brass hand-rail, polished to a golden sheen, beneath the scuttles on forward, port and starboard walls of grey steel. A battle-consultnant, larger and more powerful than Vengeful’s, dominated the rear half of the room. A pair of communication-consoles sat against the aft bulkhead, either side of the hatch.

  A thought occurred to her: “Where is Courland?” she asked.

  He should be here to surrender, to acknowledge her victory.

  “In the brig.”

  The Admiral spun back and stared at Ormuz. “Explain yourself,” she snapped.

  Ormuz shrugged. “He refused to give me his parole, so I had him thrown in the brig.”

  This new-found confidence was annoying now—no, more than that: improper. How could he have treated Courland so rudely? “He is a Mishuan,” she said angrily. “The head of one of the first families —”

  “I know who he is,” Ormuz interrupted. “He’s the commander of the Serpent’s fleet.”

  She ignored him, strode across to the hatch and out onto the gallery. Leaning over the railing, she looked down the conning-tower well. Two decks below, she saw her executive officer climbing the ramp. “Mr Voyna,” she called.

  He stopped and looked up.

  She continued, “Have Admiral Courland released and brought to me here.”

  He sketched a quick bow, turned about and hurried back down.

  Her escort—a dozen of Vengeful’s most imposing rateds—stood at attention against the bulkhead. They were led by a midshipman, a short, stocky woman with wide shoulders and a wide flat face. “Ms Zoria, see if you can find out how many of my crew survived and are aboard Empress Glorina.”

  Back on the Flag Bridge, she found Ormuz once again gazing out of a scuttle. He turned and beckoned her toward him. “I think you should see this,” he said.

  She crossed to him and saw immediately what he had been watching. Kantara had fallen away
from Empress Glorina, was now a mile or two distant. Depending from the cruiser like some parasitic creature hung Vengeful.

  As they watched, the battlecruiser came apart. Something burst amidships, fountaining debris from her flank. Part of her superstructure hung as if balanced, and then slowly spun away. Gashes opened in her sides; more of the battlecruiser’s interior became visible. The hull began to fold and spindle. It was eerily silent. More holes peppered Vengeful. There was a bright flash. Debris expanded in a sphere as the battlecruiser ripped apart, taking Kantara with her.

  The Admiral let out a deep sigh. “She served me well,” she said quietly. “I will miss her.”

  “You have a better ship now,” Ormuz replied.

  She looked up at him, surprised at his insensitivity. Vengeful had been hers. Her first command, her home. “It is not the same,” she said coldly.

  He shrugged; and again she noted he no longer seemed so diffident in her presence. She had liked that caution—while he might resemble Ahasz, he had not behaved as him, and she had found the difference appealing.

  “What happens now?” he asked.

  “Now? We get this battleship in order. And there is still mopping up to be done.” She paused and turned to look at Geneza, that curved plain of turquoise beneath them. “And there is the battle down below to be won.” She smiled grimly. “But we will not celebrate our victory until we have lifted Ahasz’s siege of the Imperial Palace.”

  Not until, she thought, I am before my father and he sees what I have done.

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  Rinharte lay on the ridge of the hill, Marine-Captain Najib beside her, and gazed at the battle below. The Imperial Skirmishers hidden amongst the copse in the bottom of the lea had temporarily halted the enemy advance. In squads of five, they had burst out of the trees and crashed into Gwupek’s troops. Now the enemy line was bunching about the Skirmishers.

  The remainder of Skaria’s army ran down-slope towards the battle. Field-pieces across the valley fired bolts of directed-energy, which hit the earth with shattering booms and threw dirt yards into the air. Some of the shots hit troopers and blasted them messily apart.