by Blaze Ward
Vo was working very hard at not feeling emotions these days. Any sentiment would lead him to either mindless rage or despair. Neither of those were constructive most of the time.
He reconsidered his choices as he re-read the words.
There was one other place he could go, emotionally, and still possibly even make it back to sanity safely afterwards.
If he cared to.
Wrath.
“I don’t know Field Marshal Rohm,” Vo observed airily. “Or the Seventh Guards Army. Who can fill me in?”
Iakov Street, of all people, spoke up. Decanus Street had been reigning darts champion at the Maltese Cross after the last tournament. And had helped Vo kill an Emperor before that. But he rarely spoke up in public, at least not without a very good reason.
“Political general, zu Arlo,” Street called from the corner.
zu Arlo. Only the old timers called him that. It was the province of the twenty-four who had been there with him. The rest hadn’t yet earned the right in the eyes of their comrades.
“Go on,” Vo prompted the man.
“Seventh is a good Army, sir,” Street continued. “Only one infantry division in the mix, with five mechanized and three tank, including 19th Heavy Armored. They hold the whole southern continent from outside Santiago.”
“What about Rohm?” Vo asked. “You said political.”
Street glanced around the room. Not nervously, but keyed up.
“Everyone on mute,” Vo ordered. “Now.”
Hands flashed to buttons without hesitation. Street nodded.
“Betting in the NCO mess several years ago was that he was angling to marry Princess Steffi when she came of age,” Street said in a low voice. “Have kids with the Imperial family. Wouldn’t be surprised if he kept the idea and changed targets. Never been married, so no divorce scandals along the way. And he’s what we would call a social general, rather than a street fighter.”
Vo nodded sharply.
“In the Republic of Aquitaine Navy, we used to call them Noble Lords, as opposed to Fighting Lords,” Vo replied with just enough of a sniff to convey his opinion of the former and his preference for the latter.
He turned to Reese. “Get me Field Marshal Rohm on the comm. I’d like to ask him why he’s moving so many of his troops north without orders.”
The visages around the room grew dark and a little terrible as Vo glanced about. He took a deep breath and walked to the middle of the room.
“And put it on the big screen,” Vo continued in a tone that a stranger might mistake as light, possibly even friendly. “I’d like us to see each other as we talk.”
A few minutes passed, but only a few. Vo suspected that the Field Marshal was awaiting the call. The room projected behind the man didn’t look like the inside of an assault skiff. Perhaps a lady’s boudoir, if Vo was inclined to be charitable.
If.
The Field Marshal himself appeared tall and lean in a slickly-tailored uniform. He had a black widow’s peak and slicked-back hair on an aquiline face that somehow missed being august and settled for vaguely smarmy. At least the piercing, hazel-brown eyes showed intelligence, if a low kind of cunning.
They studied each other for a moment in silence. Vo guessed that the man expected to score points by making Vo speak first. He had the look of those sorts of playground games.
Vo wasn’t playing.
“Field Marshal Rohm,” Vo pronounced the name slowly. “I’ll presume that you have read the same orders from Grand Admiral Wachturm that were transmitted to all divisional and higher headquarters. The one placing me in command of all military forces inside the atmosphere. So I have a simple question: Why are you disobeying a direct order to hold your units in barracks while civilian forces operate?”
If the men around Vo had slightly more of a reaction than Rohm did, everybody twitched at the tone and the words. Including the man on the screen.
“You are merely a General, Arlo,” Rohm replied with something of a sneer. It might have been a pleasant, tenor voice. On another man. “And a foreigner, to boot. You do not give me orders.”
Vo nodded. The preliminaries of scuffing dirt on each other’s shoes was out of the way. Now they could play rough.
Vo found himself looking forward to playing rough.
“I see, Field Marshal,” Vo commented. “So you do not feel that the Grand Admiral has the authority to issue orders to an Army officer?”
Another surge in the man’s pupils. Even a hair of a dilation looked huge, when the man’s projected eyes were the size of grapefruits on this screen. And he had probably never tried poker with people who were cutthroat players.
“I am the senior Army officer on this planet, with Grand Marshal Jenker killed in Werder,” Rohm’s voice got testy. “I will take command now and show you how to run things correctly. You’ve obviously made a mess of it, bringing in so many peon marines and civilians, and not recalling all the men I have under arms.”
Vo smiled. It felt like the blizzard outside, cold and deadly. From the corner of his eye, he could see Street smile back, so it probably looked like death as well.
Street’s did.
“Field Marshal Rohm, you are hereby ordered to return to barracks,” Vo said, slowly and formally. “Your entire force is ordered to return to barracks as well.”
“You do not give me orders, boy,” Rohm snarled in a mighty voice. “I suggest you take your pissant group of fools, your so-called legion, and remove yourself from my operating theater before I lose my temper.”
Yes, Wrath.
It had been a month of utter anguish for all the people he could not save. All the corpses they had dug out of rubble. Atop that, a year of living as a foreigner among the constant sniping from the majority of Army officers who were of noble birth.
And a decade of assholes like this one.
Vo might wear the black sword rank tab of a general, but in his soul he was still a yeoman on the lower decks, dealing with snotty spacers fresh out of training and full of themselves.
He rolled forward, ever so slightly. Up onto the balls of his feet as his shoulders hunched forward. Again, not much. Just that last warning a feral animal gives you.
“I am also zu Arlo, Field Marshal,” Vo snarled back at the man. “Ritter of the Imperial Household. That means, among other things, that I speak for the throne. For the Emperor herself, until she decides to remove that privilege. That means I do give you orders. Imperial Orders. And I have given you an order. In ten seconds, you will be guilty of active mutiny against a superior officer during combat operations, under the Imperial Military Code. Do I have your attention, Field Marshal?”
“You think you can make me, General?” Rohm roared. “With one division of troops?”
“No,” Vo admitted.
“Then you stand down,” Rohm ordered. “You can’t stop me!”
“I don’t have to, Rohm,” Vo replied with a tight, angry smile. Street’s smile mirrored his, two men contemplating the fastest way to decapitate a chicken for dinner. “I will simply order Admiral Provst’s battleships to bombard your formations from orbit until you surrender. To shoot down your aircraft and crash them into whatever land or ocean happens to be below. And then, according to the ancient codes, I will order your surviving enlisted men to be decimated by their mates, with all of the officers executed by the remaining enlisted men. You can stand next to me when I play this conversation for the Emperor, or I can carry your head into the throne room by your hair. Which will it be?”
Vo was not pleased with the way his own men recoiled at his words, even if Rohm seemed to suddenly discover the precipice yawning open at his feet. Troopers of the 189th Legion should be harder than that. He would have to add something to the training regime, after this, to toughen them up to the necessary level of deadly.
The Army might have gone stale, as Wachturm had said. It had apparently gotten soft as well. Too much time in garrison would do that. He would need to take these men
and invade a hostile planet, that much was obvious.
Transform them from mere killers into something more impressive. Something Alber’ d’Maine might have recognized.
The internal of that must have played out on Vo’s face as Rohm watched. Probably the look of disinterested death. Rohm’s face had gone white.
“You’re serious,” Rohm whispered in shocked, appalled disbelief.
“No, I’m done,” Vo replied quietly. “Stand down, or start digging in.”
Pause.
Wrath.
“We’ll return to barracks immediately,” Rohm’s voice had a hint of whimper to it now. “Sir.”
Not much. About what Vo would expect from kicking a puppy.
He felt like that, too, right now. Like he was kicking a puppy, but these men could never know that. None of them. The whole Empire needed to fear that Vo zu Arlo was hard enough, mean enough, deadly enough to carry through with a threat like that.
Because he was.
And right now, he was looking forward to it too much for his sanity to bear.
Vo took a quick breath and stepped back from ordering the Navy to open fire on ground targets. He forced his fists to open, as painful as that was, and blinked slowly.
“Turn over your command to a subordinate, Field Marshal Rohm,” Vo said. “And report here under guard. You can help me and my men dig bodies out of the rubble with your bare hands, so you can begin to understand what the last month has been like for them. It will change your outlook on many things.”
Rohm gulped, nodded, and the screen went dark.
Vo blew out a breath and let his weight settle back on his heels.
“I have Admiral Provst on channel fourteen for you, General,” Reese said quietly into the emotional void that had opened in the room.
“Main screen,” Vo commanded.
Tom Provst usually looked like a reanimated corpse, especially today. Vo understood why. Understood the guilt that had wracked the man. It was hard enough losing one of your own and having to write a letter to his parents. Vo had done too many of those.
Tom Provst still held himself personally responsible for the death of the crown prince.
Vo had wondered in that first fortnight if he would get a message from one of the other admirals that Provst had finally cracked and taken his life. Wachturm had warned him, as well.
“Your ships can stand down as well, Admiral,” Vo voiced the words quietly, as if speaking at a funeral.
Provst studied Vo’s face for a few moments before he nodded.
“I wondered, on Day One,” the Navy man said with the angry drawl that seemed to be his default these days. “Wondered whether Wachturm was crazy for putting you in charge down there. Like he was crazy for leaving things to me up here. But it gave me a place to hang onto. A reason to get up and move forward. What would you have done if Rohm had called your bluff?”
“I wasn’t bluffing, Tom,” Vo responded.
“Yeah, I can see that now,” Provst nodded again. Calm with the emotional flatness that you only got standing in the face of death. “I knew the civilians would listen to you, especially after that speech. And the fleet and ground pounders will now, too. What will she say?”
Spoken that way, there was only one woman Provst would refer to. Vo had to step past the Fleet Centurion in his mind and give thought to the young woman Wachturm had gone to retrieve.
“That’s tomorrow’s problem,” Vo replied, signaling Reese to cut the channel before the ugly emotions got out of hand and he said too much.
He had no idea what she would say when she watched the video and read the reports everyone would file. And he didn’t care. He wasn’t here to win a popularity contest.
He was here to do a job.
A few more corpses along the way wouldn’t make his nightmares any worse than the twenty million people that were already there.
Chapter XXVI
Date of the Republic Dec 28, 401 Forward Base Delta
Jessica entered the main conference room confident, but still on the vaguest of pins and needles. The final battle at Trusski had shown her how badly she had underestimated The Eldest and the sorts of people he formed in his crèches. The type of socialization and commitment that could turn his people into warriors. What someone might do when convinced that they had been shown The Truth.
In the year since, she had taken those lessons and applied them, pirate-style, across the entire sector of space on this side of the M’Hanii Gulf raiding almost every system Buran held, save Samara.
She had only threatened that over-secured system. Forced them to reinforce Samara again and again, lest Imperial fleets suddenly descend upon it if he dared move ships to defend the rest of the frontier. The other places she appeared without warning.
But that was yesterday. Jessica had something new in mind today.
She didn’t need to convince the men and women in this room. She already had them. They had been with her long enough, each in their own way, to have married their paths with hers.
It had taken them to glory. It might yet take them to their deaths. But nobody had ever promised them that they would die in bed.
The main conference room on the station was huge. Suited to hold fifty comfortably, rather than the double handful here today, but it had the best AV suite, a full holoprojector like both Auberons, and a monster version that could hold an image eight meters across.
Jessica found it amusing that everyone looked at her as she entered, but nobody moved to stand. In the old days, the Noble Lords had generally insisted on an unwritten protocol that all lower-ranking officers stood when a superior officer entered.
The Fighting Lords had been too occupied with more important things.
Her inner team awaited her. Nils Kasum had once called the foursome of Denis, Robbie, Alber’, and Kigali her Merry Men. There was some element of truth to the historical designation.
Today, she had added Enej, Arott, and Tamara, II Augusta having just arrived yesterday with a newly designed and built flight wing. Kanda would represent the survey cruiser Ballard as her eyes. Yan was here as well, ready for all the crazy engineering tasks that awaited, with Moirrey off helping Casey.
And it was going to get crazy.
Jessica had one moment of sorrow that Casey wouldn’t be here. Jessica had looked forward to the young woman taking command of the first Imperial corvette of Yan’s new design that would join this force. Without her, Jessica had asked Em to hold them back until St. Legier was adequately protected, and then send out a full fleet, the one that IFV Indianapolis would anchor as a pocket flagship.
In six months, she would have doubled her available weight on this strike force’s border, but she didn’t want Buran to have that long to prepare.
Jessica took the seat at the end and nodded to everyone, setting her mug of fresh coffee in front of her and placing both hands on the tabletop to ground herself. She picked out Arott, seated next to Denis, across from her.
It wasn’t that Denis always sat in the chair furthest from her, although it had taken her time to process that. Denis was sitting so he could watch her back at all times, a movement as automatic for him as breathing.
Just one more thing that made them such an effective team. She could trust him with anything.
She smiled at Denis, and then Arott.
“We need to up the crazy,” she announced simply.
Most of the commanders frowned. It was enlightening that Kigali, Yan, and Arott just grinned. They had anticipated her.
Arott nodded.
“Which vector?” he asked with a grin, as if it was a foregone conclusion, what she was asking.
“Downstream,” Jessica answered. “And south.”
Arott nodded. The rest were confused. It was good.
Denis turned his whole upper torso to study the man next to him, before returning his attention to her.
“Is there some sort of telepathic sense that develops, once you become a Fleet Centurion?�
� he asked with the slightest sarcastic tone.
It was Jessica’s turn to smile.
“He and I had this conversation already,” she said. “We will beat Buran by being unpredictable. At some point, the beast will figure out that we must have a base in the gulf itself, and come looking. So we’re going to move to a different place. Logic suggests a place from which we can launch raids directly into the Altai sector, on the other side, so I’m sure that Ninagirsu is as well defended as Samara.”
“Ninagirsu is spinward, Jessica,” Denis noted. “We’re going the other way?”
“Yes,” she replied, pressing a button on the table in front of her and bringing the projector live.
It took a moment to find the right file, and then the entire projection was filled with the Imperial side of the Gulf in blue, and Buran’s side in gold. At this scale, stars ten light years apart appeared as close neighbors, with the vast channel of darkness running down the middle.
“If we were on a planet,” Jessica began, “M’Hanii would be a river that served as a natural border between nations. For the longest time, it was that in space, as well. Until Buran decided to expand. There have been so many worlds terraformed in the distant past that nobody noticed The Eldest dropping quiet colonies into Fribourg’s gaps.”
She pressed another button and the projection rotated and began to zoom.
“But even Buran doesn’t have enough people and ships to take them all,” Jessica continued. “As near as we have been able to tell, with intelligence provided by the former Khan, there are gaps and pockets over there, based purely on stellar geography and rates of birth.”
A star lit up now, well downstream from their current location, and very close to the bottom. From the side, the Milky Way galaxy was a fried egg, thick in the core and then a relatively smooth flatness as one headed out to the edges. And it rotated around the core, giving spinward and anti-spinward, or upstream and downstream, meaning. On average the galaxy ran about one thousand light years thick.
“This is Stanovoy,” Jessica said as the image grew closer and closer. “If we were on a planet, this would be something of a peninsula in a river, protecting a secured anchorage bay behind it. There is a gap that largely separates it from all the neighbors, but it is something of an industrial center, as there are a variety of fairly-rare mineral deposits that are easily accessible. According to the man now known as Seeker, the bay was caused by a massive supernova exploding in the distant past, clearing the local space and seeding all the proto-systems around it.”
