by Blaze Ward
“What do we have planned for them?” Denis spoke up now.
She could see the look of rage underneath his face. Denis had always been the quiet, competent one, but he had also turned into another beloved uncle to the young woman suddenly thrust into the one role she wanted least in life.
Whatever Jessica asked, whatever Casey needed, Denis would make it happen, no matter the cost. It was why Em had promoted him to white.
“A month ago, we would have snuck in and frightened them, like we’ve done over here,” she responded.
“And now?” Denis pressed.
She could see the rest wanted to ask that question, as well.
How far are we willing to go to pay back those bastards for what they’ve done? What they’ve become?
“I don’t plan on dropping any bombs on the planetary surface,” Jessica said in a low, dark voice. “Up until now, this has been a quiet sector for them, so I’m not expecting significant military forces at hand. And Seeker has said that they don’t believe in the sorts of mass fighter formations we use to defend systems, instead relying on just beams and missiles. If we get lucky, we’ll drop in and be facing nothing capable of even challenging our right of passage. Like Thuringwell was when we got there. That’s when things will get ugly.”
“Ugly,” Kigali observed in a voice with no emotional loading whatsoever. “Define ugly, please?”
“I want you and your team to assist Alber’, Robbie, and Denis in damaging or destroying every military outpost or civilian craft we can lay guns on while we’re in system, Kigali,” Jessica challenged the man. “Tamara’s folks will pursue the ones that think they can blink away from us. Then we’ll go after any civilian stations and factories in orbit, giving them just enough time to do a full evacuation, like Admiral Wachturm did at Ballard. I want to permanently, materially damage the economic underpinnings of this system, and this sector, before we move on to the next one and repeat it. Eventually, I want to destroy the economy of the sector itself.”
“Scorched earth?” Robbie asked.
He had known her longer than anyone, at this point, having served under her back in the days when she commanded Brightoak.
“If it moves, it dies, Robbie,” Jessica said. “Up until now, this has been a military endeavor on our parts, trying to make them stop at a border and behave. I’m past that. We’re all past that. As soon as I can get a message home, I’m asking David Rodriguez to send whatever help he can. I’m asking the Senate to reinforce First Expeditionary Fleet with new squadrons, before that bastard comes any farther. The Eldest wouldn’t listen to reason, so I’m going to resort to the kind of violence that would have made my name an epithet for evil and destruction, before he destroyed a planet. Any questions?”
Yan surprised her by raising a hand. He almost never brought things up in public, preferring private meetings to work out details, before springing them on the rest of the group. Either he had already done so with the right people, or felt comfortable enough with them to start cold.
“Yan?”
“I have grown intimately familiar with the contents of Project Mischief,” he spoke in that slow drawl he affected when he wanted your attention. “It was always deadly, but there was an element of goofy playfulness to many of the things. Archerfish drones, sure, but also Eye of God orbital satellites, made of burning magnesium visible in broad daylight.”
Everyone smiled at that, at what Moirrey had perfected. Jessica was proud of the tiny woman, the Evil Engineering Gnome, and just sorry she couldn’t be here with them.
zu Kermode of Ramsey. One of the new Emperor’s Ladies- in-Waiting, as well as one of the house Ritters.
And a good part of the reason the rest of them were still alive.
“Go on,” Jessica prodded.
She was always amazed at how far the man Bedrov had come from good-old-boy pirate, serving then as Ian Zhao’s second in command; to the confident, deadly, naval architect bringing a whole lifetime of lethal experience to the field of battle. Jessica would miss having him in Tactical command of Kali-ma, her flagship, and losing him on the surface of St. Legier would have been a terrible blow.
But he was here now. And if his anger out-weighed Denis and the rest, that was a result of watching the mushroom cloud from orbit rather than just on a video.
Seeing friends die firsthand.
“I have a few designs that have not made it into any official files, while I worked out the specs and power requirements,” he continued. “They will not be of any significant value while you are out raiding, but you’ll need them before you go after a major target like Ninagirsu or the sector capital at Severnaya Zemlya. They are not nice. Won’t work for shit against anybody but Buran, either. But you need to plan six to eight weeks in semi-drydock for the cruisers and Vanguard. Less if we send a request to Wachturm for extra construction engineers on the next run. Plus one or two of the frigates.”
“Okay,” Jessica noted as a placeholder. “How bad?”
“I have not gotten pissed enough to put numbers to a planet-cracker, Your Majesty,” Yan growled, reminding everyone here that he only answered to the Queen of Corynthe, and nobody else. “Everything short of that is fair game. Plus, I’m gotten some new designs from Moirrey and from a friend of Oz.”
Jessica stared sharply.
“That one wasn’t from Oz?” she asked in a hard voice.
“Correct,” Yan said. “I have my theories as the origin, as Oz has a different tactical signature to his thinking. But it is a very effective design, and I plan to implement it.”
“Huh,” Jessica grunted. “But the rest?”
“I’m going junkyard dog,” he snarled in that slow drawl. “Rabid, ugly, and mean.”
Even Jessica felt a chill at his words. She had seen Yan Bedrov angry. She had never seen him like this.
“You, Arott, and I will meet offline and go over them, Yan,” she decided. “Everyone else, bring your crews up for a higher operational tempo. We’ll send Mendocino and Duncan back for supplies as soon as we have a list, plus request any spare hands Em can send, so we may have a troopship docked here soon.”
She paused to scan the room, noting the poised faces, the flickering anger. The rage buried just underneath the surface.
“This will be like Cahllepp, all over again,” she said. “With one exception. We were trying to scare the Imperials then. I intend to punish The Holding. As Robbie said, scorched earth. Tamara, make sure your people understand that we’re going to do this Alber’s way.”
Tamara nodded. Her crew were the newest members of the team, but she had been there at the beginning with Denis and the rest. And everyone understood what someone meant when Alber’ said Goddesses of War.
Led into battle by the Queen of Destruction herself.
Chapter XXVII
Imperial Founding: 179/12/24. The Death Zone, St. Legier
Vo was doing paperwork in his personal office when a knock on the wooden door brought him back to the surface. Never enough food for everyone, so it must be parceled out carefully enough to maybe keep enough people alive for another few days. Fuel for heaters so people might not freeze to death in the cold. Transport to get as many survivors to safety and volunteers into the Death Zone as possible.
And wood and rope for gibbets. Looters were shot, but their bodies were still hung from posts in the ancient style, as a warning of what someone would face, if they thought they could get away with something.
Fortunately, the numbers of fools was dwindling. At least for now. Vo had no doubts that at some point the idiots would decide that he had stopped paying attention and they could get stupid again. The last two months hadn’t ruined his opinion of humanity, but it hadn’t done anything to improve it, either.
“Come,” Vo called in reply, setting down his pen and rubbing the bridge of his nose.
He looked forward to the day he could retire someplace soft, like a strike commando team on a suicide mission.
Reese Bore
l opened the door, peeked in, and stepped to one side.
“Field Marshal Rohm to see you, sir,” Reese said in a careful, neutral tone.
Vo rose. Not to cede authority to the man, but to greet him as equals, rather than threatening to have him executed.
Again.
Up close, the man had the tall solidity that ran through so much of the noble class in the Empire. Perhaps a hand shorter than Vo, and skinny, but it was a wiry strength. His hair had a layer of gray just visible underneath the bits that had been dyed black.
Rohm was dressed in his best class two uniform, the sage with many of the impressive ribbons. Not as good as Vo’s would be, if he wore everything, but Vo didn’t think there were any left on St. Legier who could, with Jenker dead. And the man was unarmed, as he should be.
Vo stuck out a hand as the officer trod carefully into the small office.
“Field Marshal,” he said simply.
Rohm took the hand, once he realized that Vo wasn’t about to attack him. Or shoot him.
“General zu Arlo,” he replied, adding a ghost of a smile when he realized that Vo wasn’t about to crush his hand, either, while shaking.
“Sit, please,” Vo gestured to the chair. “Borel, have someone find the Field Marshal a full set of cold-weather field utilities that are a good fit. He’ll be joining us on our next patrol round. He’ll also need a pistol and an armorer to help him learn to use it.”
“Yes, sir,” Reese said, closing the door silently.
Vo studied the man for a few moments. It was the first time they had met in person, as far as he knew. Rohm had vocally been one of the conservative ones who hadn’t agreed with Karl VII awarding a Rittership or a Colonelcy to a foreigner. Had Rohm been in the Navy, Vo had no doubt the man would have at least secretly supported the coup by Dittmar, if he hadn’t declared outright. The Army hadn’t mattered enough on that day to even be noticed.
There was a streak of conservatism that ran deep in Fribourg. It had served them well when things were stable and predictable, but Vo understood how much a female Emperor would challenge these men. Offend them.
How many would agitate for her to stand aside so an acceptable male heir could be located somewhere and enthroned? The Imperial Succession List existed for expressly the purpose of tracking every person with Imperial blood in case that bomb had wiped out the top five hundred candidates in one go. They would go into the second half, if they had to.
They didn’t need to, with Lady Casey alive.
Vo was here to enforce that.
Rohm, for his part, seemed to study Vo just as closely. They had already had the pissing match where Rohm decided that he wasn’t ready to play a game of throne or neck. No doubt the man would attempt to ingratiate himself with Karl VIII and cast aspersions on Vo’s character in the future.
Vo really didn’t give a shit what the locals thought. Or said. He had been handed an impossible task. The only thing he could do now was to fail as well as he could.
Twenty millions ghosts were going to haunt his dreams forever. The only question he had now was how far short of two hundred million more he could manage.
“Field Marshal, I ordered you to report to me here for two reasons,” Vo began. Best to get this out of the way. “One, I don’t trust you, simple as that. And I have to make an example of you so none of the other commanders out there decide to try me. The admirals have already been broken to the bit by Wachturm after the coup, and they like Tom Provst, so I don’t have much to worry about there.”
“I see,” Rohm said carefully, matching Vo’s neutral tone. “And two?”
“Two,” Vo let his gaze find a point one thousand kilometers into an invisible distance. “I had to deal with a great deal of grief and snide commentary from pompous, well-borne gentlemen like yourself at Field School. You’ve never had to get your hands dirty, or not at least since you made it past lieutenant twenty-some years ago and could order other people to go get wet and muddy. You’re going to live like me and my men for a bit and remember what it’s like, before I send you back to Santiago. Or until the new Emperor decides what she wants to do with the two of us. As you’ve said, you’re the senior surviving officer, in terms of rank and time in grade. I was just the man they put in charge of saving the world.”
Vo appreciated the fact that Rohm shut his mouth rather than arguing. It wasn’t a threat, so much as a promise, to throw them both onto the carpet in whatever Imperial throne room Centurion zu Wiegand ended up using when she got here. To let her first official act possibly be something drastic.
There was nothing Karl VIII could do to Vo that was worse than going to sleep each night.
Vo had carried it all on his shoulders for long enough. He wasn’t Atlas, and he wasn’t Heracles.
Rohm let the moment pass. He had apparently spent enough time introspective on his flight up here to understand what a noose felt like around his throat.
“What should I concentrate on, sir?” Rohm asked, deflecting the conversation onto careful, professional grounds.
Two officers, evenly ranked, unsure of seniority, set to working together. The newcomer asked for directions, possibly orders, on the assumption that the man already on scene might have a better understanding of the immediate situation. It was more like the Aquitaine way, the way the Army did it, especially since the Fribourg Fleet was exactly the opposite, with the senior officer immediately in charge, regardless of any total ignorance of the tactical situation.
“I’ll attach you directly to Headquarters Ala for now,” Vo said. “In a week to ten days, I have six hundred fleet marines that will be ready to be dropped on the southwest corner of the Death Zone, near Strasbourg. I’ve studied your record, and you have enough civil engineering background to take command of them as they work on docks and warehouses. I would like to turn that city into a regional transit center if we can dredge the waterfront deep enough for larger maritime ships and barges, with a new or expanded starport somewhere on Lake Zurich itself or up a river where we have open space to work.”
Rohm paused as he absorbed the words. Obviously, not what he was expecting when he walked in the door.
Pity. Perhaps if Rohm had done as much research as Vo had, he would have been able to guess better at what was coming. And if he wanted to put his noble ass to work, he would earn a lot more credit with the 189th Legion. And their commander.
The moment passed.
“I can do that, sir,” Rohm said quietly.
He paused again, unsure. Verging on words, but holding himself still. Still enough that Vo almost missed it the flinch.
“Speak, Field Marshal Rohm,” Vo said, echoing a much earlier conversation with Jessica, still his model for this sort of thing. “Better to ask now and not be confused later.”
Again the pause. Eyes up and distant, finding the right words. Mouth crinkled up, almost as if he had bit something sour, but not quite.
Finally, the man gave up.
“Why?” Rohm asked. “You aren’t one of us. Weren’t born here. Aren’t technically even an Imperial citizen as many would judge it. Why are you doing all this?”
Hands gestured to encompass the room, the city, and the Death Zone. Maybe the entire Fribourg Empire.
Vo tapped the red sword patch on his chest with one meaty finger.
“I swore an oath, Field Marshal,” he rumbled. “We all did, but I doubt that many of you considered what it really meant. That oath required me to storm the Imperial Palace and kill Sigmund Dittmar in order to rescue Karl VII. Right now it means going junkyard dog on St. Legier in the aftermath of a devastation so vast that the language lacks the necessary terms to describe it, except Death. I’m trying to teach the 189th everything that it entails. Not just the pride, but the cost.”
Rohm studied him closer. Vo just stared at the man as he did.
Something changed. Vo couldn’t put his finger on it, but Rohm’s head came up a little. The shoulders squared and pulled back.
“I swo
re the same oath,” Rohm replied, his voice a challenge.
“You did, Field Marshal,” Vo answered. “I’ve studied your record. You’re a good man, and a good officer. That’s why we’re sitting here talking, instead of you being tossed in the stockade until Karl VIII returns. You swore that oath, but you had forgotten that there are costs associated with what we do. We have to pay them now.”
“You’re going to take on the entire Death Zone by yourself?” Rohm asked.
His voice wasn’t sneering, nor incredulous. Maybe midway between the two.
“I’m not alone, Rohm,” Vo countered. “The 189th Legion stands with me. And the fleet. I have the entire civilian population of this planet to call on. I would like the help of the rest of the Army, but they have to understand that they aren’t in charge here. They’ll do it my way, or they can rot in their barracks.”
“I see,” the man said. “And if I had come here angry, and demanded satisfaction in a duel, to assuage my impugned honor, zu Arlo?”
His voice was very flat, very careful. Distant. Curiosity, rather than challenge.
“I’ve killed more men with pistols than swords, Field Marshal,” Vo said. “One more wouldn’t weigh that heavily on my conscience. Not after the twenty million I already failed here.”
Rohm slammed his mouth shut. Blinked hard.
Understood that he probably would have lasted about as long as a puppy, if he had gone through with such a threat.
That much was obvious in his eyes.
Vo thought the man would say something brash and arrogant. He had that reputation about it, from everything Vo had read. Instead, he extended his right hand across the desk.
