by Blaze Ward
“I can’t,” Tom Provst whispered fiercely. “I failed the boy. I can’t live with that.”
“Tom. TOM,” Em yelled as the man’s eyes lost focus. “Look at me. Now. Good. I need you, Tom. I have to go do the single hardest thing I think I will ever have to face, and I need you here, holding things together until I get back.”
“I can’t do it, Em,” Tom whispered. “I’m broken.”
“Tom, I need you. It’s as simple as that,” Em countered. “I need men I can trust. What happens next will test the entire Empire. Give me a year. Promise me that, and I’ll give you anything you want.”
“Anything?”
“Tom, I’ll even load the gun for you and walk away without a word, but I need you right now. Things will come apart while I’m gone, without men like you holding it together.”
“Gone?”
Tom’s swarthy skin had gone white, but there was something in his eyes finally. Some note that the insanity that had burned everything else out, hadn’t completely consumed him.
“I have to go retrieve the Emperor, Tom,” Em said. “Whether she likes it, or not.”
Chapter XV
Imperial Founding: 179/11/10. Army Training Depot “King Olaf,” St. Legier
“General, I have the Grand Admiral on channel six for you,” Vo heard one of the men say quietly.
Everything was quiet. Only the life support system refused to be silent, slowly blowing cool, clean air, even as a terrible sirocco unfolded around them, hot winds outside racing outwards from a wound to the planet’s soul.
“General?”
Vo shook himself like a wet dog, coming back into his body from whatever place he had gone to. He blew out all the air in his lungs like it would help and pulled fresh in.
Some men respond to shock by going cold. Hollow.
Others simply broke and never quite recovered themselves.
Vo had learned early on how to put his sanity into a safe place and hold it there, regardless of what the outside world did. It had served him well in a life of petty crime. And the inevitable stint in jail. And marine boot camp.
And all the stupid places he had gone since.
“I’m here,” Vo said, marveling at how normal his voice sounded.
He wasn’t an emotionless automaton. He simply could not afford to let any emotions out right now, lest they all come, like the residents of Pandora’s box freed by him leaving any crack.
“Channel Six, General,” the man said carefully.
Vo could feel all twelve men staring at him. Needing him to be steady. Giving them a rock upon which to stand.
He had spent a lifetime doing that.
It wasn’t going to get any easier tomorrow.
Vo cleared the channel and put Wachturm on conference mode. He might have to keep secrets from the rest of the Legion, but the men around him would be necessary accessories to anything he did.
“Wachturm, you’re on speaker,” Vo said simply, warning the Grand Admiral.
“Acknowledged, zu Arlo,” Emmerich replied.
Vo could hear an even-greater pain in the man’s voice, but nobody had leveled the Dragon Gates with fire, back on Anameleck Prime. This was merely Vo’s adopted family.
It was Wachturm’s home. His whole life.
The Grand Admiral paused for another moment, probably composing the words to sound better, knowing that the 189th would be hearing them directly instead of filtered first.
“Werder has been destroyed, General,” the Admiral said. “The primary crater measures roughly seventeen kilometers across and nearly a kilometer deep in places. They are still estimating the magnitude of the planetary shock, but the number is simply catastrophic. Somewhere above an eleven on the Richter scale. For a primitive society, this would be an extinction-level event, to quote one of my scientists.”
“Yes, sir,” Vo agreed. “We are still feeling it down here. What are your orders?”
“Vo, I need your competence,” Wachturm said grimly. “I have to go and retrieve the emperor. The palace was destroyed. Crown Prince Ekkehard was killed in the battle. I’m not even sure how much of the Army High Command has survived, because yours is one of the few units of any size that I could reach. Admiral Tom Provst will command local naval forces while I’m gone, but I have to have somebody on the ground, organizing things.”
“Sir?” Vo asked.
“Men I can trust Arlo,” Wachturm’s voice turned heavy. “Men she can trust. There are other divisional commanders, Army commanders I could reach out to, but you are the only Ritter in command of a military force on St. Legier. And the only one I know well. The planet has been nearly shattered. The population will start coming apart without someone to rally them. To give them orders. And to bury whatever bodies they can find.”
“Can’t the fleet do a better job organizing, Grand Admiral?” Vo responded.
“Possibly,” Wachturm agreed. “But this is the exact reversal of the conversation you and Anthohn and I had, when you first took this job. We can hold orbit, but we cannot be there on the surface doing things. You have your experience with Fourth Saxon. You have the men of the 189th. You have the zu. And you have my faith that you will do the right thing. I don’t have anybody better suited. Neither does she.”
Vo would not cry. Not now.
He would hold himself together until this was all over. Stable. Rigid. Upright.
Vojciech zu Arlo hadn’t known what kind of man he was, until he walked into that dingy hall to meet with retired Senior Judge Holman Metharom.
But he would do what was right, as Navin the Black, Jessica Keller, and Karl VII had taught him.
“Acknowledged, Grand Admiral,” Vo rasped, still right at the edge of that precipice.
He would not fall. He would not fail.
“What are your orders?” Vo managed to repeat in an even voice.
“You will take command of all Imperial Land Forces on St. Legier, General zu Arlo, under my authority as Grand Admiral, speaking for the throne. You will coordinate rescue and relief efforts. You will exercise Palatine authority on the surface until the Emperor returns or I relieve you. Right now, she is the only person who outranks me, and that will remain so until the House of Dukes can conclave. And that might take more than a year, given how many of those men were likely in Werder yesterday. The fleet supports her, and me. Provst will command naval forces in the system, but only to the edge of the atmosphere. Questions?”
“Will they accept her?” Vo asked.
It was a technical as much as political question, but one that would have had a very resounding negative five years ago. Before Lady Casey became Emperor the first time. And there were still people out there cleaving to the old ways. Those fools would be a problem.
If he let them.
Which was why the Grand Admiral was asking him, and not one of the others who might have different ideas.
“The fleet backs her, General,” Wachturm growled. “In Fribourg, that’s really all that matters, but she will also have the 189th. And she is beloved of the general populace on a variety of levels. It will be enough.”
“Where do you fall in the Line of Succession, sir?” Vo asked, drawn by the tangent.
Yesterday, that would have been an academic question. Today, the galaxy might hinge on it.
“Depending on who you asked?” Wachturm replied sadly. “Tenth or eleventh. Yesterday. Some of them were in Werder, so I’m not really sure. And I don’t give a damn, because number three is alive and well. And counting on us. Does that help?”
Vo took a breath, held it, released. There were twelve men around him, but they were as little, white mice in the cupboard now, fearful of being noticed as Imperial Policy was made before their eyes.
“It does, sir,” Vo replied, pushing his anger down until everything came out flat. “You have given us an impossible task, with an impossible deadline. We will fail at it as well as we can until you can return with whatever help you bring. But we will not fall
.”
Vo looked around at the faces surrounding him. Saw the calm assurance break through the sadness. The reassuring nods. Men who would march into Hell with him.
Again.
“Fail, General?” Wachturm was slightly perplexed.
“We are the 189th Legion, Grand Admiral,” Vo said, giving hope to these men, and to the others who would hear this story, this legend, repeated for as long as those unit colors survived. “We stood.”
“Thank you, Vo.”
Vo cut the channel while his emotions would still allow it. He turned to Decanus Borel and ground his teeth for a moment.
“Put the entire Legion in motion, Reese,” Vo ordered, soul gone to ice. “Get all the scouts as close to Werder as they can safely travel, as fast as they can get there. Once Fourth Ala clears, send the tanks north as a unit and then have everybody else break down our base here, pack it all on every vehicle we have or can requisition, and start north. Designate roadways and have Fourth Ala keep them clear of refugees so we can move upstream as a force. Once the scouts finds us a spot, plan to build a base ten times the size we need, for all the people and supplies that we’ll have to handle, with a landing base for shuttles from orbit.”
“What about other units, sir?” Borel asked.
Vo paused and thought about the logistics of the thing. Invading Thuringwell had been an afternoon on Hogan’s Alley, by comparison.
“Have them start building bases well out,” Vo decided. “A ring around 400 kilometers from the center, every fifteen degrees of arc from zero. We’ll send them people once we get organized, and they can feed and house them far enough away that they’re not in our way. We’ll handle the vicinity of Werder, both for logistics and security. Provst can send down some of his marines once we own the territory.”
Vo unbuckled and rose from his seat. Perhaps split open his cocoon to emerge into summer for the first time.
“I will be back as soon as I have a chat with the kitchen,” he announced. “This will be our last meal together as a team for a very long time. I won’t say that we should enjoy it, but we need to remember this, too, when we get there and have to hold an Empire together.”
Chapter XVI
Imperial Founding: 179/11/11. Fleet Headquarters, Above St. Legier
Amala did not like the waves of fury boiling off the bodies of the marine squad escorting her and the Grand Admiral through the halls of the station. Mostly they were here for the Grand Admiral. She felt like an afterthought.
As a diplomat and a foreigner, she had been locked down hard yesterday, isolated by security protocols enforced with adamantine ruthlessness. Cards no longer opened any doors, including her own suite, so she had spent the last twenty hours sealed in a space measuring twenty-three square meters, at least with an attached bathroom. Two men with guns had delivered dinner and breakfast without any words whatsoever.
Amala had known the station had been attacked. The whole platform had rattled with incoming fire, and she had been there enough times with Alber’ to know the sounds of battle.
Grand Admiral stopped so suddenly she would have plowed into the man, but one of the marines behind her grabbed cloth with an angry fist and pulled her up short. Wachturm turned to face her in the empty hallway.
“Has anyone briefed you?” Wachturm asked her blankly, standing in the middle of a broad hallway, surrounded by a dozen men with guns and body armor. And rage.
“No, sir,” Amala replied, trying to keep the resentment from showing in her voice.
Wachturm nodded grimly. Paused, looking for the words. Fixed her with eyes that stared death across the meter between them.
“Yesterday, St. Legier was subject to a major assault by Buran forces,” he began sharply.
“Acknowledged,” Amala said.
Keep it short, tight, and professional. These men are all out on some edge. Death was not far from their hands.
“Werder was destroyed by an orbital bomb, Bhattacharya,” he continued.
“Destroyed?” Amala felt all the blood drain out of her body, leaving only a cold, hard knot in her belly.
“Leveled,” he said. “The Palace, the Emperor, the government, and much of the military’s command structure on the ground is gone. I am facing a significant crisis and have to be six places at once.”
“How can I help, Grand Admiral?” Amala asked.
He paused, measuring her. Perhaps seeing her for the first time as a person, and not an object representing somebody else.
“Be understanding and flexible, Ambassador,” he decided. “And not take anything personally while we work this internal matter out.”
Amala nodded.
“I will be leaving the system shortly,” Wachturm continued. “You and the Minister will be accompanying me in an official capacity. If I left him here, I suspect some level of malice would befall the man.”
As in, someone would sneak in and kill the old Khan for no greater reason than the nation of his birth. The man barely left his cabin to begin with, spending all of his time reading whatever books they would deliver, and writing his Magnum Opus. He had certainly had nothing to do with the attack, unless his mere presence here, having escaped Trusski and the wrath of the Warriors in Samara, had somehow been a trigger.
“Understood, Grand Admiral,” Amala said.
Wachturm nodded and turned again. He started walking with those long legs, forcing Amala to skitter along in his wake, but at least the guards seemed to have relaxed some. She had spent enough time on the other side of those guns to feel the difference in the sound of their boots on the metal floor.
The angry waves came back when they reached the Khan’s hatch. No verbal grumbling, but it was there in the set of the shoulders, the hands, the eyes. Men with unrequited rage issues.
Amala made a note to dial everything down around these marines for a while. And to warn Yuur, if possible. This goon squad had no sense of humor anymore.
Wachturm waited politely while one of his men keyed the bell, waited a beat, and then opened the hatch with a card. The first two marines were in and stationed to either side of the door, guns up, before anyone else moved.
Yuur Ul had barely stirred. His desk was already turned sideways so he could watch entertainment videos and documentaries on the side wall. Papers were piled up by chapters on every flat surface except the cleared space on a side table where a tea service waited immaculately.
Wachturm entered. Amala followed, stepping to one side and giving Yuur a silent warning about the seriousness of the issue with the set of her face.
Yuur rose and bowed, slowly and formally.
“Grand Admiral, how may I serve?” Yuur asked, his tenor voice at once soft and resilient.
Amala watched Wachturm come to parade rest, but he still reminded her of a wild hawk.
The Grand Admiral was a giant presence. Combined, she and Yuur maybe out-massed the man, and she was half of that herself. Yuur was a short man, thinly built.
But he was also a willow tree, resilient in the face of the storm.
Wachturm was the oak.
A moment of electric silence passed.
“Yesterday, The Eldest launched a major raid against this system,” Wachturm began, using Yuur’s term for the Sentient computer, the undying god who ruled Buran.
“I suspected as much, given the sounds and the response,” Yuur replied carefully. “If I may ask, how bad was it?”
“Buran’s fleet dropped a number of nuclear bombs on the planet,” Wachturm said. “The same as the prior raid, but with several Roughsharks instead of the one. And then they attacked with a larger weapon, a bomb roughly the size of a battleship. The Imperial Capital of Werder, along with every man, woman, and child in it, was destroyed.”
Amala watched Yuur collapse into his chair silently. For a moment, she thought he was suffering convulsions until the sobs became audible.
But Yuur Ul was also a Scholar, a Minister of the Eighth Rank. He controlled himself after a few mom
ents and looked up.
Amala would remember the pain in the man’s eyes on her dying day.
“Sukhoy Nos,” the Khan whispered angrily. “Damn them.”
His shoulders slumped even further, but then he rose and faced them again. Another bow, deep and slow. Tears spilled down his face.
“Grand Admiral, if you need to execute me, I have only one request,” the Scholar stated.
“That is?” Wachturm replied, apparently knocked off his train of thought by Ul’s reaction.
“Do not ever make the video public, sir,” Yuur said. “The Eldest will use it as justification for the second attack, regardless of the timing and the purpose.”
Yuur surprised Amala by stepping to one side and gesturing to the papers on the desk.
“Burn this,” he ordered. “Or bury it as deep in your archives as you wish. It is of no value now, save to Scholars of History. And spies.”
“Minister?” Amala spoke up before she could stop herself.
Yuur turned to her, all the pain evident.
“No value whatsoever,” he repeated, livid.
“Why?” the Grand Admiral’s anger was evident in his voice.
“The purpose of The Holding is to provide an example of a just and intelligent society, Duke of Eklionstic,” Yuur explained. “To show a better option for all mankind, an aspiration for greatness. It is now a worthless gesture.”
“Worthless?” Wachturm asked, centering in.
“Through Amala Bhattacharya, I have come to know Aquitaine,” Yuur said, gesturing with one hand. “Through you, and more helpfully Centurion zu Wiegand, I have come to know Fribourg. I had hoped to bridge the gap of communication, to allow the Scholars to know one another, that there could be peace, as Keller hoped. That will never happen now.”
“Never?” Amala had to ask.
Yuur turned to her, focusing his terrible intent.
“The Eldest has just committed the most grievous sin, the most unimaginable crime known under the laws of Fribourg, Aquitaine, and any of a dozen other nations, Scholar Bhattacharya,” Yuur pronounced with a voice of angry doom. “The Eldest has proscribed the ancient penalty on St. Legier. He has tried to destroy an inhabited world without any provocation. Fribourg will never forgive that. Period. The Holding could overwhelm and conquer the Empire tomorrow, and children a thousand years hence would still be secretly taught about that crime. Aquitaine has exactly one exception, in their entire legal structure, regarding Sentient systems, so they will gladly join in the holy crusade to destroy The Eldest. Every free nation in the galaxy will as well, frightened that they will be the next to suffer.”
