“No, Captain Tanaka, there is no destination for you but home. Go,” he ordered. “Tell Dan!Annette Bond that Terra will not be forgotten. The might of the Imperium will gather.
“She does not need to drive the Kanzi from her space, merely hold them. And if Terra falls, we will liberate her.
“On this you have my word, and through me, the word of my Empress.”
#
Chapter 52
There was something fundamentally overwhelming about the sheer scale of the leviathans of deep space that now made up half the active hulls of Jean Villeneuve’s command. His shuttle pilot took the approach to Emperor of China slowly, allowing the flag officer to study the immense warship as they came aboard.
The central hull was a bullet shape eighteen hundred meters long and fifteen hundred wide, but the extended nacelles and sweeping arches of her engines and weapon mounts added easily three hundred meters in every dimension.
Emperor of China represented an incredible amount of firepower, protected by the most powerful shields the Imperium could build, but Jean was all too aware of the ship’s vulnerability once those shields failed. Even a super-battleship could take only a handful of hits.
The Majesty class wasn’t quite the biggest, most modern warship type in the Imperial inventory, but at seventeen million tons, she wasn’t far behind. The redesignated Duchess-class ships Nova Industries was working on would add half a million tons of armor to that, edging them, just barely, into being the heaviest warships in the Imperium—and a class far more capable of continuing to fight after losing its shields.
“All right, Lieutenant,” Jean told the pilot with a soft smile. “While I appreciate the scenic route, Captain Lougheed is waiting for us. You can take us in.”
“Of course, sir.”
#
The boat bay was a vast expanse, capable of simultaneously handling the shuttles for the deployment of entire battalions of ground troops. Jean’s one shuttle was dwarfed into insignificance, the bay’s size made only more obvious by its lack of the assault shuttles for those troops.
The tiny party that Captain Lougheed greeted him with looked positively miniature, but Jean traded salutes with Emperor’s Captain and senior officers.
“Welcome aboard, Admiral,” Lougheed told him. “I’m glad you could finally make the time for this inspection.”
Over three weeks had passed since Jean had ordered Lougheed to take command of the unrefitted capital ship. Three weeks in which Bond’s entire Council had found themselves dragged into the final stages of organizing the first worldwide election on Earth…ever.
“I am grateful to be away from Earth, to be honest,” Jean told Lougheed quietly. “I also believed you would need the time. You weren’t exactly given every advantage, after all.”
“The trainers Medit! got us have been priceless,” Lougheed replied, gesturing for the Admiral to follow him. “But yes, we’re running a ship designed for four thousand with less than half of that.”
“Will we be able to crew Duchess of Terra when she commissions?” Jean asked. The degree of expansion his Militia was undergoing was concerning.
“I think so,” the Captain replied. “Remember that those four-thousand-sentient crews are designed to operate her for multi-month voyages. We’re going to be sitting in orbit drilling for the foreseeable future, so we can get by with less.”
“But you wouldn’t mind a few extra thousand people?” the white-uniformed older man said with a smile.
“If you’ve got them, we’ll take them, and we’ll make spacers out of them,” Andrew said with a confidence Jean doubted he felt.
“Ha!” he replied. “Not soon, Captain, but the recruiting campaigns for non-UESF personnel are bearing fruit. We’ll be starting the first mass training sessions once the election is over.”
“We’ll still be perpetually short on trained personnel,” he conceded, “but we should be able to man each of the Duchesses as we commission them.”
“Does Her Grace know what the ship is being called?” Lougheed asked as he led them toward the engineering decks.
“She found out,” Jean admitted. “She was…displeased.”
“The ship isn’t named for her.”
“Of course not,” Jean agreed. “Just for her position. She feels that is…splitting hairs, I think was the idiom?”
Lougheed chuckled.
“Of course. If you’ll step this way, Admiral, I’d like to begin our inspection with the upper proton beam batteries…”
#
“I’ve read the specifications a dozen times,” Jean said as they wrapped up the tour in Lougheed’s office, “but to see it all boggles the mind. And the Imperium has, what, two hundred of these?”
“You’d know better than I,” the super-battleship’s new captain told him. “I didn’t get the impression that they were sharing their capital-ship strength numbers with us just yet.”
“The total is over a thousand of the various types,” Jean told him. “Half provided by the Duchies, half funded by the Imperial government itself. The Kanzi have slightly fewer, I’m led to understand. None of those numbers are exact,” he warned.
“What scares me, sir, is the Duchess class,” Lougheed admitted. “I know what Emperor is capable of. To think that we can upgrade her significantly…”
“None of the technology except the compressed-matter armor is truly new for the Imperium,” Jean reminded the other man. “We worked out matter compression by accident. Everything else was simply…a point-of-view issue.”
“Translation: while we have an edge in having an existing system, the Imperium could duplicate it easily.”
“Perhaps more importantly, since we don’t plan on fighting the Imperium, the Kanzi will likely be able to duplicate the active defenses,” Jean said. “They’ll be a nasty shock the first time the Kanzi meet them on an Imperial ship, but they’re a one-time surprise.”
“I take it we don’t expect that meeting to be with us?”
“Mon dieu, no,” the Admiral replied. “We’ll provide the Imperium their echelon of Duchess-class ships, but the Duchy’s Militia will be staying in Sol for a long time. We have a great deal of catching-up and integrating to do.”
“Like this election,” Lougheed said.
“Exactly. Her Grace designated Nash as her representative, but we still need to elect humanity’s voice on A!To.” Jean shook his head. “Have any of the candidates bothered you?”
“After the…ninth, I think, request for an endorsement, I had my communications officer put together a canned response telling them that as a serving Militia officer, I could not be involved in politics,” Lougheed replied. “My understanding is that we got over fifty contacts.”
“The word must have traveled fast,” Jean said with a chuckle. “All sixty-three men and women running for the office tried to pin me down—along with most of the rest of the Council and Captains Sade and Laurent.”
Lougheed shook his head in turn.
“We may not have many official rules yet,” he observed, “but we all know better than to get involved in politics!”
“One more week,” Jean sighed. “One more week, and then I’m afraid I’m sending your girlfriend off to the center of the Imperium as escort for our new elected and non-elected representatives.”
“That’s not a short trip,” Lougheed said slowly. “I’m not sure how long Bond was there, but she was gone a long time after she officially surrendered.”
“A month each way,” Jean confirmed. “Over a thousand light-years. If it occasionally feels like we are on the far end of nowhere, Captain, it’s because we are.”
“Not a bad thing in my mind, sir.”
“No. It’s why we were annexed now instead of centuries ago. Without that time, I don’t think we’d have been able to earn Duchy status.”
Lougheed opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by an alert ringing on his communicator.
“Lougheed,” he answer
ed it instantly.
“Captain, we have an unscheduled hyper portal, but…”
“But what?”
“Nothing’s come through.”
Jean shared a concerned look with Emperor of China’s Captain.
“I’ll be on the bridge in a moment.”
#
Andrew was very aware of his uniformed commander in chief trailing behind him as he arrived on the immense bridge of Emperor of China. If something was going wrong, the last thing he needed was to have Jean Villeneuve watching over his shoulder!
Despite his worries, however, the Admiral stopped just inside the heavily secured hatch and took one of the observer stations on the main floor.
Four concentric decks, each representing an entire section of bridge personnel like navigation or tactical, rose up around the main command center, with elevators and spiral ramps linking between them. The holotank in the middle was large enough to be seen from all five floors, and Andrew’s command chair was directly in front of it, along with the seats for his main department heads.
“Report,” he ordered as he dropped into that chair, its screens and displays switching to his preferred options instantly.
Vitya Maksimov, now Commander Maksimov in the aftermath of Warner’s betrayal, remained his tactical officer on the new ship. The hawk-faced Russian looked…stressed.
“We had a hyper portal open at the six-million-kilometer mark,” he reported. “Far closer than any we’ve seen before. It remained open for seven point six seconds, but we didn’t detect anything coming through.”
“Any word from STC?”
“They’re showing the zone clear, sir,” Maksimov confirmed. “They are requesting someone from the Militia investigate.”
Lougheed sighed, and waved for Villeneuve to join him. Much as he would like to, it probably wasn’t the right call to take his super-battleship out to investigate the strange portal.
“Your orders, Admiral?” he asked. “We had a single portal, but nothing came through.”
“Take Emperor of China to battle stations, Captain,” the old Admiral ordered instantly. “Get me an all-Captains channel,” he continued. “We want to take this very carefully.”
“Console to your left is set up, Admiral,” a young-looking redheaded officer with Ensign’s insignia reported a moment later. Andrew’s communications officer was a forty-something black man, but he hadn’t been on duty—and the general quarters alarm had only barely started ringing.
Andrew linked into the all-Captains channel from his own command chair, waiting to see what Villeneuve decided.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” the Admiral began. “Take your ships to battle stations. Now.”
From the lights behind Kurzman, Tornado’s Captain hadn’t waited for the order. Laurent and Sade, both civilians until recently, took a moment to follow through even after Villeneuve had ordered it.
“Good,” Villeneuve said as the ships began to report battle ready. “I want Emperor of China and Queen of England to move up to cover the likely zone for an emerging vessel with missiles. Tornado, you’ll move in front of the super-battleships and play missile defense if needed.
“Geneva, I want you to move in investigate the portal,” he ordered. “This may be nothing, people, but I don’t trust mysteries anymore. Vite, vite. Move.”
Andrew was already giving his own orders as the rest of his bridge crew reported to their stations. Coordinating with Captain Sade, he began to move the immense bulk of his ship forward at a miniscule single percent of lightspeed, scanners sweeping the apparently empty dark as the two lighter ships shot forward.
“A hyper portal is a massive energy investment,” Villeneuve murmured. “I can’t see why you’d open one for nothing.”
“We’re watching for drones and similar small craft,” Andrew responded. “Whatever came through, we’ll find it.”
The four Terran ships crept forward into seemingly empty space, the destroyer out in front as Geneva shot toward the portal’s point in space.
“Nothing,” Maksimov said aloud. “Radar, lidar, everything. It’s like someone opened the portal and didn’t send anything through.”
“I don’t buy that, Commander,” Andrew told him. “There has to be something.”
“Pulsing again,” the tactical officer replied. “If there’s anything out there, we’ll be able to read the name on its hull.”
More nothing. Andrew was starting to suspect that someone was either testing their readiness or just plain screwing with them.
“Sir?” He looked over at Villeneuve. “I agree that there should be something, but we’re not finding anything.”
“I know,” the Admiral replied, looking tired. “Captain Kurzman,” he said into his communicator, leaning forward. “Prepare to take Tornado into hyperspace to see if we can find the person who rang the doorbell.”
“Contact!” Maksimov. “Bòzhe mòi, they’re on top of us.”
The ship had appeared out of nowhere, an egg-shaped vessel miniscule in comparison to Andrew’s super-battleship…except that it was inside the forward extended weapon mounts, barely fifty meters from the core hull.
“Incoming transmission.”
The image of an A!Tol in a strangely plain, gleaming white command center appeared on Andrew Lougheed’s bridge.
“Duchy of Terra ships, this is Ki!Tana,” the massive A!Tol told them calmly, a flicker of amusement crossing her skin. “I applaud your readiness and preparation…but I need to speak to Duchess Bond.
“Immediately.”
#
Chapter 53
“I knew she was big,” Elon said into Annette’s ear. “I don’t think it sank in that she was this big.”
Ki!Tana’s strange egg-like ship now rested on the landing pad at the Hong Kong Spaceport, surrounded by a genteel cordon of Wellesley’s finest, all in powered armor.
If there was a nonhuman being in the galaxy that Annette wanted to keep safe, it was Ki!Tana. The alien who’d helped upgrade Tornado. Who’d guided a lost and confused human crew to Tortuga and helped them find the contacts to begin finding their feet.
The alien who’d become Annette Bond’s friend, and who had asked the right questions to trigger her conscience when the opportunity to unleash genocidal hell on the people who’d conquered her world fell into her lap.
There weren’t many humans Annette would feel more obligated to protect.
Not, as Elon was pointing out, that Ki!Tana needed much protecting. The A!Tol moving down the ramp from the dark green starship towered over even the power-armored humans, easily three meters tall.
“A!Tol females don’t stop growing,” she told her lover. “And, as I understand it, Ki!Tana is now basically immortal, so…”
“I’m stunned Wellesley let us keep security this light,” Elon replied.
The Colonel, standing only a meter behind them, coughed gently at Elon’s comment. He might not have been in power armor, but Annette doubted he wasn’t using some form of personal enhancement.
“We know Ki!Tana,” she told Elon. “She might be an enigma wrapped in a mystery, but she’s a friend.”
“And was one when we had too few, it seemed,” he agreed. “Shall we, my love?”
The gentle smile those words brought to her lips lasted until she got closer to Ki!Tana—close enough to read the patterns of color on the A!Tol’s skins. The alien was afraid. Terrified, even.
“Was it truly necessary to spook my crews so badly, Ki!Tana?” Annette asked, hoping to ease some of the tension.
A flash of red amusement crossed Ki!Tana’s skin, accompanied by the horrible beak-clacking she recognized as the alien’s laughter.
“No,” she allowed. “It was perhaps useful to test their readiness for the cycles to come, but I’ll admit I did it to amuse myself. Such is in short supply in these times.”
“In these times,” Annette echoed. “Somehow, Ki!Tana, I am not surprised to see you again as the harbinger of dark times. What’s ha
ppening?”
“The Kanzi First Priest has declined to recognize the A!Tol annexation of Sol,” the alien told her. “She has sent a battle fleet to conquer your world. They are at most three cycles behind me.”
Annette froze as her heart dropped into her stomach. A battle fleet. They couldn’t stop a battle fleet. Not with two super-battleships, a cruiser and a destroyer.
Three cycles was sixty hours. That wasn’t enough time!
She inhaled hard, forcing down her fear and imposing a grim smile on her face.
“Thank you, Ki!Tana,” she told her friend. “I will need to convene my Council and see what we can do. You would be more than welcome to join us.”
“Any assistance that I can provide, Dan!Annette Bond, I will,” the alien replied.
#
The conference room on the top of Wuxing Tower was silent as the Council of the Duchy of Terra stared at Ki!Tana’s sensor data in shock.
The holographic projector showed them the formation of the Kanzi fleet as it had entered hyperspace in Arcturus one hundred and eighty hours before. Twenty battleships were formed into a rough cube at the center, with the fifty escorts scattered around them in an even rougher sphere.
“The Imperium will intervene, won’t they?” Dr. Sirkit asked. “That was the deal, wasn’t it? In exchange for joining them, the Navy defends us.”
“The nearest deployment is at Kimar,” Annette replied. “If we sent a courier now, they wouldn’t be here for two weeks. Maybe more. No, ladies, gentlemen.”
She rose studying the fleet in the hologram for a long, silent moment.
“No,” she repeated. “We cannot rely on the Imperium. They will come—we will send that courier regardless!—but we must look to ourselves for our safety first. Admiral Villeneuve—what are our chances?”
She’d only seen the commander of her Militia look this tired once before: on the day he’d ordered her to flee Earth, knowing they couldn’t stop the A!Tol fleet coming to conquer them.
Duchess of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 2) Page 35
