Duchess of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 2)

by Glynn Stewart

  “She is,” Ki!Tana confirmed. “But her position as the sole human Captain in the Navy undermines her moral authority in a case like this. Her giving that order would likely protect our trainers but only by exposing Captain Tanaka herself to almost-guaranteed censure.”

  “Wonderful,” Annette responded. “What about manning the destroyers? That’s eleven hulls we have crew to put into space.”

  “But not experienced crew,” Villeneuve repeated. “Plus, well, Elon?”

  “It’s an ammunition problem, Annette,” her lover said flatly. “Our deal with the Indiri didn’t include missiles, and we’ve only had the assembly lines for point seven five birds online for a month.

  “We have full magazine loads for the three super-battleships, Tornado and Geneva. That’s it. There’s no reloads, no spares. We could probably get half a dozen of the destroyers online in the time we have left, but…”

  “Without modern missiles, they’re just extra targets,” Annette concluded. “What about Hunter’s Horn?”

  “She’s a wreck,” Villeneuve warned. “She can fly or fight. Not both.”

  “Damn. Hardly the best use of Tanaka’s skills, then.”

  “No. Which does allow another possibility,” Ki!Tana interjected.

  “Go on,” Annette said, eyeing her alien friend.

  “Duchess of Terra is currently uncrewed,” the A!Tol told them. “If you assemble a haphazard crew of teams thrown together from four different ships, she will not function well.

  “If, however, you were to assemble a crew around a core that was used to working together, especially if that crew shared a common basis of training and understanding…”

  Annette realized what Ki!Tana was suggesting at the same moment as she saw realization descend onto Elon and Villeneuve’s face.

  “We cannot ask Captain Tanaka to transfer her crew onto a Duchy of Terra ship,” Villeneuve pointed out.

  “No,” Annette agreed. “We would have to cede Duchess of Terra to the Imperial Navy, placing the first Duchess-class super-battleship permanently in their hands.”

  “We could then move the training crews aboard her as well,” the Admiral said slowly. “Placed under Tanaka’s command aboard an Imperial vessel, their prior orders become irrelevant. We can slot our new volunteers into existing crews, keeping most formations intact.”

  The Admiral smiled at Ki!Tana, the first time he’d done so since meeting the alien.

  “All five ships would be more functional that way,” he admitted. “I dislike handing Duchess over, but it’s a good plan.”

  “Not least because it keeps me off a command deck?” Annette suggested dryly.

  “I would suggest we put both you and Villeneuve on Duchess’s flag deck,” Elon told her. “While I’d rather bury you both under a mountain somewhere, you need to be somewhere you can affect the battle—and the political decisions involved as well, Annette.”

  “Commanding a starship is no longer your job, Your Grace,” Zhao joined in. “We need you with the Militia, yes, but there are too many other calls on your time. Someone else must command for you.”

  Annette sighed. She didn’t want someone else to command the keystone of Earth’s defense. She didn’t want to sit on the sideline, watching a battle she couldn’t change…but they were right.

  Her job was now to make sure the battle wasn’t for nothing. Others would have to fight in her place.

  “And it would help Jess with her campaign to restore Tanaka’s image on Earth, too. I’d rather not need heroes, but if I’m going to have them, let’s use them,” she concluded.

  “Very well,” she agreed. “I will discuss this with Captain Tanaka as soon as we’re done here.

  “Ki!Tana.” She turned to the A!Tol. “Is there any way we can use your ship here?”

  “Darkest Depths has no weapons and no shields,” Ki!Tana noted. “The Mesharom were not willing to trust me with such. She is a scout ship, nothing more. All she could do was bring warning.”

  “Which she did,” Annette confirmed. “I owe you, old friend.”

  “No, Dan!Annette. It is I who owe you,” the alien replied. “My contract remains, after all.”

  #

  Chapter 55

  “You want to do what?” Harriet demanded.

  “We are required to provide eight capital ships to the Imperial Navy,” Bond explained. “Duchess of Terra will be leaving the dock in six hours. She’s combat-capable, with compressed-matter armor and active anti-missile defenses—arguably the most powerful warship in the Imperium.

  “We don’t have a crew for her, and anything we put together would be a patchwork mess with no true cadre to hang it on.

  “Instead, we have decided to deed her to the Imperial Navy and offer her to you as at least a temporary command to replace Hunter’s Horn.”

  Harriet looked at the hologram hovering above the desk in Bond’s temporary office aboard Defense One. The details of how the ship had been augmented from its original Majesty specification were highlighted on the three-dimensional diagram: a full meter of armor built of layers of compressed-matter armor sandwiched in shock-absorbent gels and ablative ceramics. Sixty laser turrets. Forty autonomous drones with their own laser systems.

  “Your people designed this in five months?” she said wonderingly.

  “Most of it was scaling up the original work done on Tornado and the XCs,” Annette admitted. “Much of the remainder is simply different applications of technology we licensed through Uplift.”

  “I’m impressed,” Harriet admitted. “But I only have seven hundred crew, Duchess Bond. This ship…Duchess of Terra will require thousands.”

  “We also have two thousand Imperial Navy Training Corps personnel scattered through the Militia,” Bond told her. “Their orders prevent them from serving aboard our vessels in combat. As an Imperial Navy Captain, however, you can order them to transfer to your new ship and make up the crew there.

  “We can also second you personnel familiar with the operation of the Sword and Buckler active defense systems,” she continued. “And with your permission, I and Admiral Villeneuve will bring our immediate staffs aboard and take over the flag deck for the duration.”

  “You have it all worked out, I see,” Harriet concluded.

  “We checked with Medit! as well. It’s as kosher as it can be. The ship is yours, Captain.”

  “Who was going to command her if I didn’t show up?”

  “The original plan was Kurzman, but we need Tornado at full capability as well if we’re to survive this,” Bond admitted. “We’re going to use her point defenses to shield Emperor and Queen.”

  “I’ve seen battleships in action now, Duchess Bond,” Harriet told her. “Those two don’t need as much protection as you think. There’s a reason the Imperium hasn’t bothered with active defenses in two hundred years.”

  “Powerful as their defenses are, they’re twice as valuable if they only have to stop half as many missiles. That was the logic behind Duchess’s class. She is at least three times as survivable as the unmodified Majesties.”

  “I don’t see much choice, Your Grace,” Harriet finally said. “In the name of the Imperial Navy, I recognize the transfer of Duchess of Terra to our command. We will fight to defend this world, one way or another.”

  “I wasn’t exactly giving you a choice,” Bond replied. “We’ll make it happen, Captain Tanaka.”

  “We have to, Your Grace. My orders, after all, are to hold this system.”

  #

  “All right, everyone,” Harriet said briskly as she returned to her bridge and stepped up to her command chair. She tapped a few commands on her command chair, transferring control of the main holotank to her.

  “Start shutting down your consoles and packing up,” she told them all. “Pass the word to your departments and teams; we are standing down Hunter’s Horn and transferring vessels.”

  “Captain?” Sier asked.

  She finished the sequence on
the command chair, focusing the holotank on the Lunar Yards and the super-battleship in the middle of the refit slip.

  “Duchess of Terra will be online in four twentieth-cycles,” she notified them, the mental conversion from “almost five hours” almost automatic now. “She has been transferred to Imperial Navy control, and as the senior Navy officer in system, I will be taking command.

  “Since Duchess is fully combat-capable and Hunter’s Horn is not, I am ordering all Navy personnel in the system to transfer to Duchess of Terra,” she continued. “We will be reinforced by just over eighteen hundred Imperial Navy Training Corps personnel and a thousand volunteers from the Duchy of Terra Militia familiar with Duchess’s new systems.”

  “The Majesty class is one of the Imperium’s most powerful warships,” Vaza replied. “Have they added anything worth the effort?”

  “I’ll provide you the briefing documents they gave me,” she told him, “but, in short, yes. Compressed-matter armor and major active anti-missile defenses. Duchess of Terra could take another Majesty-class with ease at this point.

  “And the Terrans have turned her over to us. In exchange, we will do our duty and protect this system.”

  “They’re giving us a super-battleship,” Sier noted. “I see the Duchess likes you.”

  “They owe the Navy eight capital ships,” Harriet pointed out. “And this way, they put the most experienced crew in the system aboard the most powerful warship in the system.”

  Unmentioned, though she was sure it had been on Bond’s advisors’ minds, was that rubbing in the Navy’s face that the newest Duchy in the Imperium had the most powerful warship in the Imperium was a bad idea.

  Handing that ship over to Harriet and having her command it in Terra’s defense covered every base.

  Except, of course, actually having enough firepower to stop the Kanzi.

  #

  The order to evacuate the ship instigated a wave of only barely controlled chaos. Junior officers and noncoms directed techs and crew through the hallways, with an oft-repeated mantra of “leave it if you don’t need it today, we can come back for it” with regard to personal items.

  Harriet herself spent the time on the bridge, going over the specifications on Duchess of Terra, a ship over ten times as large as Hunter’s Horn. She’d been briefed on the weapons fit of the Navy’s super-battleships, but being in command of one required a whole new level of awareness.

  The Terran files on the Sword and Buckler systems made for interesting reading as well. She could see the places where the Sword turrets had grown out of the missile defense suite her old UESF battleship had carried, but the Bucklers were something entirely new.

  She’d finished reviewing those specifications—and found herself wondering just where the hell some of the pieces of the drones had come from. They weren’t Terran tech, and they weren’t anything she recognized as Imperial tech, either. There was a clear third influence in the drones, and Harriet didn’t recognize it at all.

  “Captain, we have an Elon Casimir on a channel for you,” Piditel informed her. The coms officer was the last person still on the bridge with Harriet, the Rekiki having sent his own department to prepare for transfer.

  “Put him on,” she ordered. “Then get yourself moving. The clock is ticking.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Elon Casimir’s image appeared on her screen, the CEO leaning on a plain-looking desk presumably somewhere in BugWorks.

  “Captain Tanaka,” he greeted her. “How are your preparations going?”

  “We’re starting to relay people over to the Lunar Yards,” she told him. “My shuttles are going to be full, but we’ll be good to go.”

  “Good, good,” he said. “We just brought the life support back online, so you’ll actually be able to load people aboard as soon as they reach Duchess. Would additional shuttles help? We have a small fleet of interface-drive ships aboard BugWorks—they’re not as fast as Navy shuttles, but in orbit, it won’t matter.”

  “We could use them,” Harriet admitted. “Mostly for transferring the Training Corps people, Horn lost one of her boat bays, so if we’re left to my resources, it’ll be another ten hours before we have everyone aboard.”

  She saw him do the math. That would put them to within six hours of the estimated arrival time for the Kanzi fleet.

  “I’ll touch base with Captains Sade and Lougheed,” Casimir replied. “We’ll get the rest of your people to you well before then. Do you have any questions on your new ship?”

  “You were involved in the refit design, I take it?”

  “There have been few projects as critical for the Duchy’s survival since its creation, Captain Tanaka,” he replied. “I know Duchess inside and out now.”

  “The Buckler drones,” she said. “They’re not pure Terran or Imperial. Where did the design come from?”

  “That’s classified, Captain,” he told her with a chuckle. “And not by the Duchy. By the Imperium. Suffice to say Tornado carries some technology purchased from a third party the Imperium doesn’t get along with. The Buckler drones are based on that tech.”

  “I’m guessing the Navy knows about this?”

  “The Navy took all of her spare drones when Tornado was at A!To,” Casimir replied. “Having talked to Annette and Captain Kurzman about it, I’m surprised they left us any!”

  “A strong Duchy of Terra is an advantage to the Imperium,” Harriet reminded him. “They don’t want to see you fall to the Kanzi, Casimir.”

  “I know,” he agreed. “Which brings me to my reason for reaching out to you, Captain Tanaka.”

  Something in his voice took Harriet aback, and she narrowed her eyes as she looked at him carefully.

  “I presumed you were checking in on my homework,” she noted.

  “That was business,” he said calmly. “This is…both political and personal.”

  “Go on.”

  “Both Admiral Villeneuve and Duchess Bond will be aboard Duchess of Terra, on your flag deck,” he told her. “Losing Admiral Villeneuve would be a near-fatal blow to the Militia, but one they would survive.

  “Losing Annette Bond would destroy the Duchy of Terra,” he said flatly. “She is the symbol of peaceful cooperation with the A!Tol. The proof that they will respect our internal autonomy. The symbol for an entire world that membership in the Imperium is the way forward.

  “If she dies, Captain Tanaka, the Duchy of Terra dies. No heir could take her place. No elected leader could do what she has done and needs to continue doing.”

  He shook his head.

  “I have my own reasons to see her safe above all us, but cold logic requires the same,” he said flatly. “You say if Terra falls, the Imperium will liberate us.”

  “The Navy will come, one way or another,” Harriet told him.

  “I believe you,” Casimir admitted. “Almost more importantly, I believe that your superiors meant that when they said it to you.

  “I cannot give you orders, Captain Tanaka,” he continued. “I can only ask. Beg, if needed. But if the battle is lost, you must flee. Duchess carries her own full design schematics in her databanks.

  “In the normal course of affairs, those will be critical for Terra’s economic future, but if Terra falls…it will be war.

  “So, I beg you, Captain Tanaka. If the battle is lost, take your ship and its contents and passengers, all more precious to me than life itself, and run.”

  “I cannot do that, Elon Casimir,” she told him. She wouldn’t be able to look herself in the mirror later if she failed Earth again.

  “You have to,” he replied. “For the sake of this world. For the sake of the Imperium, Captain Tanaka, you must recognize when this battle is lost and refrain from throwing your ship away.”

  He wasn’t wrong. It would be the right course of action according to any rational logic and her oaths. Harriet just wasn’t sure she could do it.

  “I can’t promise anything,” she finally said. “I can only
say I understand what you’re asking and why. I just…can’t promise anything.”

  He sighed.

  “I understand, Captain Tanaka,” he told her. “Every resource we have will be committed to the defense of this system. If we are very lucky, then you will never need to decide.”

  “We can hope. Thank you, Mr. Casimir, for your time. You’ll have those shuttles on their way?”

  “Already in space,” he confirmed. “I need to talk to our super-battleship captains. Good luck, Captain Tanaka.”

  #

  Chapter 56

  For Jean Villeneuve, Duchess of Terra’s flag bridge was like something out of a dream. The flag bridges on the old UESF battleships had been an afterthought where they’d existed at all, the assumption being that the UESF would be commanded from Orbit One—as it had been, in its one major battle.

  Orbit One’s command center, though, had been as much a peacetime organizational center as anything else, with permanent stations assigned to each ship. It was an effective design for running an entire space force, but not necessarily the most efficient design for a flag officer to command a fleet.

  The Imperium’s base flag deck design called for a smaller staff immediately to hand on the flag bridge itself, with a support department to handle a lot of the minutiae of moment-to-moment communications with the fleet or squadron.

  Instead of hundreds of consoles, there were only sixteen, wrapped around a high-fidelity holodisplay linked primarily to the Admiral’s controls. It was a sleek, efficient design set up to enable one sentient to command anything from a small squadron to an immense battle fleet, staging secondary controls down through tiers of support staff and subordinate commanders.

  There were aspects to the Imperial design Jean didn’t like. It called for the Admiral to be physically behind and above his people, for example, literally looking down on them and over their shoulders at the same time.

  As part of the refit of Duchess, however, Jean had been able to redesign the flag bridge to his own tastes. Not only was the flag bridge based on the far-more-efficient Imperial design, but he’d removed everything in that design he didn’t like.