Duchess of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 2)

by Glynn Stewart

  “A few small helping hands at this point are the advantage of being part of a larger whole. We stand together, Dan!Annette Bond—so the Imperium is stronger if the Duchy of Terra is stronger.”

  #

  Chapter 45

  James Wellesley released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding as Tornado erupted through the bright blue hyper portal into the Sol system.

  The plain-looking folio of black datasticks the Laians had given him terrified him. Tornado’s computers couldn’t read more than the surface layer, which basically read “deposit X marks to the account of,” but that had been enough for him to confirm that Tallas and the Crew had played fairly with him.

  He’d kept the folio with him for the entire trip, never even letting it leave his person, let alone his sight. James trusted Tornado’s crew with his life…but those ten datasticks represented a literally incomprehensible amount of money.

  “Transmitting IFF and requesting docking protocol,” Chan announced, the tiny Chinese woman’s hands flying over the keyboard.

  “That does not look good,” Rolfson said a moment later. “Captain, Colonel, take a look at this.”

  Tornado’s main display lit up with the space around BugWorks Station, where there should have been multiple yard slips and four destroyers undergoing refit.

  There was nothing. BugWorks Station remained, with a single destroyer holding high guard position above it, but the yard slips attached to it were gone.

  “We’re being interrogated for Bravo-level confirmations,” Chan reported.

  “And I’ve got a Capital-class destroyer heading hell-for-leather our way,” Rolfson added.

  “Send them the confirmations,” Kurzman ordered, sharing a glance with his husband.

  “What the hell happened?” James wondered aloud.

  #

  “Two days to spare, Captain, Colonel,” Duchess Bond told them after she’d come aboard. “With the mess at BugWorks, we’re damned glad to see you.”

  “I saw the summary briefing,” James replied. “How the hell did Anderson pull that off?”

  “He had his people in the right places,” Villeneuve said grimly. Bond had brought Elon Casimir and Li Chin Zhao along with herself and the Admiral. The four members of Earth’s government took chairs scattered around Kurzman’s ready room.

  “With one of the destroyer XOs and control of BugWorks’ security shifts…” The Admiral shrugged. “We didn’t see him coming.”

  “I’m still looking into how he had his people so perfectly positioned,” Zhao added. “I suspect we still have a few highly placed moles, but with Anderson and his organization gone, their threat level is limited.”

  “If I’d known we had that coming…” James trailed off.

  “We needed you on Tortuga,” Bond reminded him. “Tellaki?” she asked, her voice quiet.

  “He died saving my life,” James told her. “He asked me to tell you that you gave his people back their honor. From my reading, they had to follow Kikitheth into piracy, but that only meant they were dishonored with her.”

  “I don’t pretend to understand Rekiki culture,” the Duchess said. “If he says he regained his honor with us, I believe him. I’d rather still have him.”

  “He was a good man…being, sentient, whatever,” James said. “I’ll miss him.”

  “And your mission?” Villeneuve asked.

  James removed the folio from inside his coat and offered it to Duchess Bond.

  “Successful,” he said simply. “I’ll note that we are now permanently banned from Tortuga. They warned me they’d fire on us if we returned, and even Tornado can’t go toe-to-toe with the Crew’s ships.”

  Bond took the folio and passed it to Zhao.

  “Get those dumped into our accounts and prep the transfer for the Deep Houses,” she told him. “The ships are due in two days. I don’t want any more problems.”

  “Who gets the battleships?” Kurzman asked.

  “It’s going to be messy with our losses,” Villeneuve told him. “Lougheed gets Emperor of China; Sade gets Queen of England. Lougheed doesn’t have a ship, and if we have armored warships and super-capital ships to man, I’m not wasting our limited people on Beijing.

  “You and your crew remain our most experienced and highest-functioning unit,” the Admiral continued. “We’ll need to keep you in Tornado for a while yet.”

  James felt his husband’s disappointment and concealed a smile. Whatever the Duchess had in mind for Kurzman, he doubted that Tornado’s new Captain was going to come off worse for having to wait.

  “In a month, we’ll have the first of our upgraded super-battleships,” Villeneuve continued. “She will be a revolution for Imperial warship design, as far beyond those that came before her as Dreadnought was to the battleships of her day.”

  “And once she’s commissioned, I might finally start feeling like Sol is safe,” the Duchess told them. “But I think we’ve made it happen, gentlemen. We’ve bought the Duchy of Terra a future—one under A!Tol rule, yes, but a future that humanity controls nonetheless.”

  #

  Andrew Lougheed stood in an observation deck on Defense One, watching the wreck that had been Washington be towed toward the smelter that would break her up. Every usable piece of technology had been stripped from the hull, and all that was left was metal and ceramics. Those too would be reclaimed for the Duchy’s use.

  It made sense. That didn’t mean he had to like it.

  “It always hurts to lose a command,” Villeneuve’s softly accented voice said from behind him.

  He glanced back to watch the Admiral cross the deck to him, the old man’s eyes resting on the same splotch in the stars as he’d been watching.

  “The Militia is still too small for such formalities as Captains’ Boards or inquests,” the Admiral continued. “The Duchess and I have reviewed your actions. You did as well as anyone could have asked, and better than most would have done.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Andrew replied. “I feel like I should have known about Warner.”

  “How?” Villeneuve asked. “He passed every screening, every test. I feel like he might not have betrayed us had I planned to give him a destroyer.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Andrew objected. The Admiral blamed himself? That was ridiculous. Laurent had seen more combat as tactical officer on an interface-drive ship than Warner had. Harold Rolfson, Tornado’s tactical officer turned exec, had been expected to take command of London. After him, the fourth command had been slated for the most experienced officer.

  “Intellectually, je le sais,” Villeneuve confirmed. “Emotionally, it is in the nature of men and women with…command personalities to blame ourselves when things go wrong. We would not be as effective on our command decks, Captain, were we not the type to take responsibility.”

  “No,” Andrew admitted. “I am at the Militia’s service,” he noted. “I’m guessing we will be commissioning more of the un-upgraded Cities?”

  “That remains a matter of debate,” Villeneuve replied. “Even if we do commission them, you will not command one.”

  The tone wasn’t harsh, but the words were…dangerous. If Andrew wasn’t going to command one of the destroyers, what was he…

  A brilliant blue flash lit up the sky through the glass panels as a hyper portal opened. The burst of Cherenkov radiation was enough to light up the entire window, and Andrew saw Villeneuve smile.

  “I see our Indiri friends are exactly on schedule,” he observed. “I’d hoped.” The man who commanded Earth’s defenses stepped forward, engaging an interface and zooming the view in on the four ships that had just entered Sol.

  They were immense. Andrew’s eye was practiced enough now to pick out the single freighter from the three warships, but the warships were as large as anything he’d ever seen. They were…super-battleships.

  “We got super-battleships,” he breathed.

  “Majesty class, the latest design,” Villeneuve confirmed.
“The production lines for our own point seven five cee missiles are online as well, so they won’t be carrying the obsolete birds you had to take into battle against Canberra. Two are going into immediate commission, as Emperor of China and Queen of England.”

  The Admiral couldn’t be suggesting what Andrew thought he was suggesting.

  “Sir?”

  “Unless you don’t want her, Emperor of China is yours,” Villeneuve said calmly. “You’ll be under-crewed and half the crew you have will be untrained, but we have A!Tol Navy trainers coming in to help get your people up to speed. It’ll be a challenge either way. Up for it, Captain?”

  Andrew exhaled, trying not to breathe heavily as he drank into the elegant and terrifying lines of the super-battleships. He wasn’t sure, but he thought these three were even larger than the ones at Kimar. He was being offered command of one of the most powerful warships in the Imperium.

  “I’m up for it,” he told the Admiral. He realized a moment later that Villeneuve had only named two ships. “What’s the third ship?”

  “That one is going into the Lunar Yards for a full upgrade,” Villeneuve told him. “Compressed-matter-laced armor, Sword and Buckler, the works. She’s going to be the sample ship of an entirely new generation of military technology.

  “When she’s ready, she’ll commission as Duchess of Terra.”

  #

  Chapter 46

  “Nothing.”

  The translators weren’t perfect with emotion, but after almost a year in command of Hunter’s Horn, Harriet Tanaka could pick up the disappointment in Okan Vaza’s voice.

  “It’s a big solar system,” she pointed out. “Any signs at all?”

  The Indiri shook his head.

  “It doesn’t look like Seas of Misfortune was ever here,” he told her. “No beacons, no exhaust trails, not even signs of weapons fire.”

  Harriet nodded, studying the holotank and its representation of the first system on her patrol. After twenty days in hyperspace and only a short break at Kimar, even she was starting to feel the wear. Finding the Kanzi here would have made her life a lot easier.

  “Any sign of the stealth ship?” she asked.

  “I’ll need more time,” Vaza said calmly. A!Tol technology could find evidence of a stealth ship’s passing only with vast amounts of reprocessing of the scan data. Harriet’s people were trying to do it in real time, but it would still take over a twentieth-cycle for them to have any idea if they were truly alone.

  “Both the asteroid belt and the gas giant represent opportunities for someone to be hiding,” she finally said with a sigh. “We’ll make a close pass of both and do a high-power active sweep.”

  “I thought we were looking for fleet anchorages,” her tactical officer pointed out.

  “We are,” she agreed. “But we’re also missing ships, Lesser Commander. If one of them is hiding from the Kanzi, that’s where we’d find them.”

  It was also where they’d find any Kanzi ship that was lurking in ambush. Harriet wasn’t quite using her ship as bait…but she was going to poke the hornet’s nest to see if they were home.

  “Besides,” she continued, “I don’t know about you, Vaza, but I’d like to spend more than a single twentieth-cycle outside of hyperspace.”

  The Indiri made a wet barking noise, the disturbing sound his people’s version of a chuckle.

  “I’ll swim those waters,” he agreed. “I’ll see what the reprocessing finds.”

  #

  At half of the speed of light, sweeping the asteroid belt and gas giant was a matter of hours. Harriet wasn’t entirely surprised when the search came up empty, though the cruiser’s sensors flagged some deposits of rare elements in the asteroid belt worth noting for later.

  Despite the urgency of her mission, though, after twenty days in hyperspace, it was necessary for the crew of Hunter’s Horn to have some time in real space. No matter how shielded or protected a ship was, hyperspace was always a strain on sentient beings.

  Life wasn’t supposed to be there, and you could feel it.

  “Well, Vaza?” she asked as they rounded the gas giant. “Are we being watched?”

  “These ships wouldn’t be as terrifying if I could be certain,” the Indiri told her. “Intelligence sent me the classified briefing on them before we headed out.” The frog-like alien shivered.

  “I think,” he emphasized, “that we are alone. But…” He held up one red-furred finger. “Take a look at this.”

  He mirrored part of his display to hers, allowing her to see what he’d been looking at.

  It took Harriet a moment to pick it up, though she managed it before her tactical officer flashed a highlight on it.

  “That does look like a stealth signature,” she pointed out.

  “One the currents of time have eroded,” Vaza replied. “We’re alone now, but there was a stealth ship here.”

  “When?”

  “It’s hard to say,” he admitted. “Between five and ten cycles ago. What might be relevant, though…”

  His highlight extended, tracing the faint signature’s course.

  “They went into hyperspace here,” Vaza concluded. “That vector lines up with one of the systems on our patrol.”

  Harriet ran the analysis herself, humming softly in thought. Vaza was apparently used to this by now, waiting patiently as she traced the line.

  “Our patrol route is at my discretion, though that was our intended last system,” she said slowly. “But I agree, Lesser Commander. That is very relevant.”

  Continuing to hum softly to herself, she paged Ides to the bridge.

  #

  Chapter 47

  “Approaching the Arcturus system now,” Ides announced to Hunter’s Horn’s silent bridge.

  “Take it nice and slow, Commander,” Harriet ordered. “Let’s see if we can sneak in without being spotted.”

  Sneaking into regular space from hyperspace was a difficult endeavor, one that involved creating a hyper portal exactly sized to the ship and slipping through it at relatively low speed. Relatively low speeds by interface-drive standards, of course, still took her half-kilometer-long cruiser through the portal in fractions of a second.

  Excruciatingly uncomfortable fractions of a second. There were reasons, Harriet reflected, that the hyper portal was normally made so large and crossed so quickly. Her entire body felt squished and stretched, as if multiple massive weights were slamming into her from all sides, and her ears popped under the pressure.

  Then it was past, and she took a deep breath of relief.

  “Sier,” she pinged her XO. “Have the crew report in. Make sure that transition didn’t cause any problems.”

  “On it,” the Yin replied crisply. “That…was unpleasant.”

  From the pause, he’d edited out either a curse or a metaphor he didn’t think she’d follow. Harriet’s own description of the experience would have been…long and unprintable.

  “Captain, you need to see this,” Vaza snapped. “Bringing up the system display.”

  The holotank flared to life as Harriet turned to see what the Indiri had spotted—only to swallow hard as she saw what he’d seen.

  It wasn’t hard. Vaza had zoomed the tank in on the fourth planet, a rocky airless world…with what appeared to be an entire battle fleet in orbit.

  The Arcturus system was a sparse K-class system with four rocky planets and two gas giants. No significant asteroid collections. No major comets. There was very little else in the system to attract anyone’s attention.

  “Focus our passives on those ships,” she ordered. “Get me every scrap of data you can find. Did they see us come in?”

  “I can’t be sure,” Vaza replied. “We’ll see their reaction to our emergence light in four thousandth-cycles. Until then, they won’t have seen us…yet.”

  Harriet nodded, watching the data as Horn’s computers filled in the gaps. The big ships registered first, massive support vessels that dwarfed even capital ship
s. Four fuel tankers. Two mobile repair ships. Sixteen freighters, presumably loaded with food and munitions.

  The civilian ships were easier to resolve. Even when they weren’t hiding, warships were designed to be less than obvious—where a freighter or fuel tanker wanted to be seen.

  “No ECM running on the warships,” her tactical officer reported. “We’re getting a pretty clear look, but I don’t like these waters.”

  The Kanzi, like humans, used a base-ten mathematical system. Both races had ten fingers, which was the likely source of their numbers. Unlike humans, whose squadron sizes prior to the annexation had been driven more by tradition than by anything anyone would call logical, the Kanzi Theocracy’s Navy used ten-ship squadrons.

  Two of those squadrons, twenty ships, formed the core of the fleet Harriet was looking at. Twenty battleships floated in orbit around that desolate rock, an armored fist sufficient to crush any but the best-defended systems.

  “Two battleship squadrons. Three cruiser squadrons. Two destroyer squadrons,” Vaza concluded aloud. “Seventy warships, over two hundred million tons total.”

  “They can’t be sending that to Sol,” Harriet said quietly. “Earth is…practically defenseless.”

  “If they expect the Kimar fleet base to respond, this is too little,” Sier pointed out from the CIC. “Those squadrons could probably engage Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh’s battleships, but once the fast battleships and super-battleships are involved, they’re outgunned twice over.”

  “But it’s enough firepower to make us hesitate, or so they might hope,” Harriet concluded. Her own impression of Tan!Shallegh suggested that the Kanzi were very wrong if they expected the Fleet Lord to hesitate, but they might try to convince him to back down.

  “Keep us in position, Ides,” she ordered. “Vaza, Sier, pull in every piece of data we can. I want to know the damned names of those ships before we report back.