by Blaze Ward
“What else can I do to help, sir?” Rohm asked.
Vo took the hand and shook it.
“Keep me honest, Field Marshal Rohm,” Vo said. “Remind me what it means to be human when I forget.”
Chapter XXVIII
Imperial Founding: 179/12/25. IFV Indianapolis, JumpSpace
It was the tiniest thing, the weirdest, little idiosyncrasy of naval architecture, but it focused Casey’s eyes in the dimness of her cabin, stretched out on her bunk and unable to sleep. Yan Bedrov had designed both this vessel and IFV Vanguard. Casey found her gaze drawn to the seam in the ceiling where the plates met with a weld.
On the Imperial warships, the weld was a solid bead of metal, a tube mushed slightly flat to hold the two pieces of metal together. On SC Auberon, it had been inverted, to appear from below as if a pipe had been pressed in, and then the extra bits cut away, leaving a perfect smooth curve.
It made no sense that she couldn’t look away, but Casey wasn’t sleeping tonight, so her mind kept fixating on that point.
It was probably better than some of the other places her brain wanted to go.
She gave up after a restless time and rose from her bed. She dressed quickly. Em hadn’t thought to bring any clothing for her, not that there would be anything in naval stores for a woman, let alone a woman Emperor, so she generally wore her normal uniform as an Aquitaine Centurion.
At least until tomorrow, when she expected them to drop out of JumpSpace at St. Legier.
Then she would put on an impossible corset called Emperor of Fribourg.
At least she would have two people in her immediate Household to rely on.
First, she had managed to impose herself on Em and shanghai Moirrey, with the explanation that she would need Ladies-in-Waiting, something nobody in the current incarnation of the Fleet was capable of fulfilling.
The current incarnation.
Second, First-Rate-Spacer Vibol Harmaajärvi. The lean, fussy, naval tailor that had accompanied Amala Bhattacharya to Trusski as part of a planetary invasion force that had consisted of nine people. A fifty-six-year-old sailor who had joined the Republic of Aquitaine Navy before Casey was even born. Who was currently hard at work designing and crafting what would become her Imperial wardrobe.
She would look impressive, of that Casey had no doubt. She had seen his work on Bhattacharya. But she had resisted putting anything on as long as possible, settling instead for giving the man one of her best uniforms to turn into patterns for whatever art and magic he was busy creating, down in the cabin Em had assigned the man.
Tomorrow, that would change. Forever.
Centurion Casey zu Wiegand would disappear into the fog, to be replaced by Emperor Karl VIII.
Casey found herself standing at her desk, unknowing how she came to be there. She sat, firing up the console and bringing up a menu screen. IFV Indianapolis lacked the sort of specialized software and input hardware she had left behind at her father’s palace, so she called up a basic music program and began tinkering with the settings to get it as far into advanced mode as it was capable of achieving.
If she could not sleep, she would compose instead.
She started with the woodwinds. Brass would be too much, too imposing right now. The pain in her soul required a softer sound, one horn calling softly in the morning mist, joined slowly by others, as if searching for one another.
Lost.
Strings brought a counterpoint she thought of as pain. Only then could the percussion and brass join in, like hunting dogs and horsemen chasing a stag through the brush.
Casey had thought she was facing a funeral hymn when she placed the first note, but it was quickly clear that this would be the opening to her Third Symphony. There were too many notes, too much complexity for anything else.
It would not be a meditation on loss. That would only come another time. Perhaps a later movement in this symphony, layered atop a basic requiem. Something she would simply call Father.
Casey lost sight of the screen as the tears filled her eyes. The keyboard was proof against water and salt, so she let muscle memory add the next several bars until her brain told her she had reached a moment to pause. The play button brought it all out in one long, sonorous tide of music.
An hour of night had passed. Six minutes of an opening movement had taken shape. For a moment, she considered that an aria might be necessary, a voice raised up and commanding the music, but the only thing she could imagine at this moment was a scream of rage filling a darkened hall.
No. Not rage. Fear. A woman looking up at Death itself descending from the heavens before darkness fell. What it must have been like to be standing in the middle of a park in Werder as the shields failed and the world ended.
Casey hit the save key as silence fell. She closed up the screen and pulled her legs up onto the chair, wrapping her arms around her shins.
She thought about her father and her mother. The Emperor Karl VII. Empress Kati. Her brother Ekke, killed aboard IFV Firehawk. Steffi, killed in the earlier coup attempt.
And she cried.
Chapter XXIX
Imperial Founding: 179/12/26. The Death Zone, St. Legier
Vo snarled back at the blizzard as he emerged from the warm building. He faced the screaming winds piling wet sleet against both the side of his skiff and the two men standing at the ass end of it, out in the cold, waiting for him. Rather than argue with them, he climbed up the two steps and found a jumpseat. Sure enough, the two were in a beat behind him, slamming the hatch shut and dogging the lock.
Temperature outside, nine below zero centigrade. Temperature inside felt balmy, but it was probably only three above right now. But it was dry and the heaters were going full tilt.
One good thing about all the armor around him was the thermal insulation designed to keep them invisible on IR scanners. Once you got the beast warm inside, it would stay that way for a long while. Someone must have been up before dawn running the engine to get it here, though.
Vo was just happy he could take off his gloves and the knit cap he kept under his helmet. Unbutton the over-jacket a little, but leave the gunbelt in place. Relax some.
It was a nasty bitch out there.
Danville handed Vo an insulated mug of reinforced coffee. Lots of cream, perhaps the slightest touch of rum. Fat and fluids to keep him on track as they went out into the storm.
Blizzards didn’t stop the patrol rounds, designed to rescue survivors and capture looters. They just made the work more painful. More than once, Vo had considered finding one of the heavy tanks and riding along with them, but he needed his staff. Long gone were the days when it could just be him and a horse.
Vo glanced around the room and picked out Rohm, sitting in the forward port seat. The one closest to the interior heater. The eyes above the scarf gave him away, bundled up tight against the weather, even inside. Santiago was probably in the low thirties today. Shorts and loose shirts weather. Go to the beach and ogle the pretty girls.
Instead, he was here. Dressed as warm as Street could get him with a day’s warning. And had spent a couple of hours learning how to handle the revolver on his hip and shooting it into a berm. Officers used beam pistols for the most part. Only Fourth Saxon and the 189th threw copper-jacketed-lead at someone.
Today.
That would change, tomorrow. One of the tomorrows. Energy shields really didn’t work worth a damn at ground level, and required a huge generator to power. Soldiers wore insulated, semi-grounded armor to resist portable energy weapons.
Wouldn’t do shit against a bullet.
Rohm smiled. Vo smiled back.
“We set?” Vo called out.
“You were last, sir,” Danville replied with a grin.
“Go,” Vo ordered.
Even after a year, he was still getting used to a team of men who constantly fought to be a step ahead of him. Up earlier. At shower and breakfast before he first stirred. Training laps or dojo time, with marksmanship practice
in mid-afternoon. Command Team, Headquarters Ala was about a year from turning into a dangerous, lethal, strike Commando, at this pace. Invading a hostile planet, hell, even just raiding one with this force, would be a pleasure then.
Kill them for a while.
The skiff surged upwards on its repulsors just enough to clear the skids before retracting them flat against the hull. Vo had pounded into his pilots the importance of staying low, going so far as to award tank crews gold stars on maneuvers, every time they were able to lock even an autocannon on a silhouette at range.
As they had taught him on Thuringwell, every centimeter of height was another hundred yards farther away that someone could hit you. Where this legion were going eventually, those tiny bits of elevation would matter. Not so much today, but it needed to become instinct.
“With the blizzard today, Field Marshal,” Vo began, “we’re going to go fairly deep into the zone and make a fast run looking to see who’s moving around. Anyone we see is either in need of our help, or up to no good. Only someone desperate is out in this weather.”
“I see,” Rohm answered. “Is this for my benefit?”
Vo noted that only a few of the men bristled at that, though neither Street nor Danville did. Good. They understood that Rohm was a hard man, a senior officer, but he was being a professional, and not an asshole. The good non-comms could smell the difference.
“Partly,” Vo said. “Some mechanized Patrol of the Legion is out doing rounds almost constantly, but the area is huge, so HQ Ala contributes as well. We haven’t really broadcast the state of things very widely because civilian morale is too unstable. I don’t need people angry or devastated right now. Or, at least, more so. The ones on the front lines with us are tough enough. The ones back home are working their asses off to support everyone we locate and ship to them. I’ve got churches and schools overflowing, but generally people have hot food and a place to sleep.”
“Are there many survivors left inside the Death Zone?” Rohm asked.
“A few,” Vo grimaced. “Too stubborn to leave. Or hurt and riding it out for now until someone can get to them. Every hunk of electronics within about seventy kilometers of the epicenter shattered under the pulse. Outside that, it was solid static for nearly a day. If someone broke a leg, they had no comm. That’s where we come in. For once, we’re the good guys. We just have to find them, which will be a pain in this weather, but when it is needed most.”
Rohm grimaced back and nodded. Vo could see the man imagining the ground he had overflown ballistically at eighty thousand meters, suddenly up close.
Senior officers like Rohm normally got to spend their careers in climate-controlled bunkers, well away from the nastiness. Vo had little sympathy for the man, but would withhold judgment until Rohm got snow and mud inside his jacket and gloves.
Then they would see how far the rest of the Army needed to come.
“Cutlass Ten, this is Cutlass Six,” a voice came out of the speaker by Vo’s head. “I’ve got a heat signature of some sort. Strange.”
Vo cocked his head at the tone. The men of the Cutlass team, his Command Patrol from the Headquarters Ala, were generally older. Fire-breathing kids were in First, Second, and Third Ala. The craziest were with the Scouts in Fourth. He wanted veterans close by, available as a fire team or support.
And they weren’t supposed to be uncertain. Must be good, whatever it was.
“Pipe the feed here,” Vo ordered.
The screen on the front wall had been showing a camera view forward, overlaid with a map based on sensor readings from the other nine skiffs, spread out like a pack of hunting dogs. They were covering ground faster than Fourth Saxon could have, but not at full speed. Just enough to keep their sensors sharp.
A red circle appeared on the map, then turned dotted.
“It was here, but it’s gone now, Cutlass Ten,” the man said. “Not too sure I didn’t imagine it, sir.”
Vo grinned. The rest of the men around him did as well, including Rohm, after a second.
The question was never Are you paranoid? It was always, Are you paranoid enough?
Better to hit on false positives occasionally than to miss the important things, like a man about to stand up from cover, holding an anti-tank missile as you flew by.
Still, it had been nearly ninety minutes of patrol. They were only another twenty from the area of Imperial Palace. Good time for a break. And some hunting.
“Cutlass Six, drop short and ground,” Vo ordered. “Deploy your team as a backstop. Everyone else circle wide and establish a perimeter far enough out to hold. Cutlass Ten will drive them to Cutlass Six.”
Treat it like a training exercise. Like they had found a looter here. Someone smart and agile might have been able to drop to cover fast enough to disappear if they knew what they were doing. Whoever it was probably hadn’t counted on Vo snooping when they vanished, especially not with Danville and Street on his flanks.
Generals weren’t supposed to do this sort of thing. And that was the difference between an Imperial General and an Aquitaine Legate. Declan Burdge, commander of Fourth Saxon back on Thuringwell, had ridden the occasional patrol rounds with the force. Said it kept him young.
Old man was probably still tougher than Vo, even in retirement.
The ten skiffs circled now, a pod of killer whales spotting a wounded seal. Vo pulled his gloves and helmet back on, just as the others did. Rohm hadn’t shed any of his.
Hands went to carbines next. Vo and Rohm had revolvers. So did all the men, but they also carried autocarbines. Good for close in work, since Vo didn’t plan to swarm a defended trenchline in the clear.
The pilot grounded them in the lee of a swale. Street was out first, followed by Danville. Vo managed to make it out third, mostly by using his bulk to hip-check Decanus Colton Formain, his Draconarius, or standard bearer, out of the way.
The sleet was lighter than earlier, but still chewy. If things got a little warmer, it would turn to a very sticky rain, but this was miserable enough. And another good reason to use slug-throwers. This much weather would drastically reduce the effective killing range of a pulse rifle.
Thus the carbines.
Vo drew his revolver and kept it low to his hip. Once everyone was out, he was pleased that Rohm was doing the same. The man might not be comfortable with the noise, in spite of the hearing protectors built into his helmet, but he did understand weapons.
Lancer Terence Aday was out on the far left flank as everyone went to a knee and studied the immediate area. Aday was the baby of the group, being the only Lancer, but he was also a sniper that both Street and Edgar Horst had vouched for. He took up a covering spot with Curator Johan Hoga facing rearwards as his spotter.
In overbuilding his command skiff, Vo had also been able to have a larger squad as well, ten men in addition to himself, instead of the normal total of seven in a fire squad’s skiff. There were twelve of them now, with Rohm. Generals weren’t supposed to lead in places like this, so Vo let Danville and Street set the pace, each shifting outwards to cover a forward flank, like they always did, with the rest of the men moving carefully behind them.
This might have been a park at one point. Maybe the fabulously-huge back yard of a wealthy Duke or Landgraf, if the pile of wooden and marble ruins behind him represented a manor house rather than a resort. Cutlass Ten had set down in the middle of what might have been a rugby pitch, with shattered buildings like jagged teeth on three sides of them as they moved, and a brief bit of perfectly flat that began to roll into forest some over there.
Deciduous trees had already lost all their leaves in the winter, so the blast had just knocked some down. Evergreens had lost tops everywhere, leaving a mass of downed limbs, but very few trunks in the way. The snow was patchy, but Vo couldn’t tell if the trails in it represented critter traffic or vagaries in the terrain itself. Maybe underground pipes for an automatic watering system or something. It hadn’t gotten warm enough to melt, unless the few day
s of sunshine had sublimed everything.
“Cutlass Lead to all units,” Vo spoke normally for the microphone in his helmet to pick up. “Cutlass Ten advancing towards Cutlass Six. Everyone stand by for action.”
Action.
Ambush, runner, or nothing. You never knew. Best to treat every possible encounter like a training exercise with live weapons. Ten armed skiffs, plus more than seventy men, all heavily armed veterans.
They crossed the empty playing field and got to the edge of the rougher brush. Vo was back about twenty paces from the leaders, working on walking silent, with Rohm close by. The Field Marshal had never stalked a deer, that much was obvious.
Danville went to one knee with a hand in the air. Like Vo, the man held a revolver, with his carbine slung. His free hand went down and touched something, sifted it between fingers.
Vo had instituted his own version of Fourth Saxon’s silent language for troops in the field. Learning it from him had moved these men out of their comfort zones. Danville signaled that he had a track.
One person. Small. Moving in the same direction. Fairly recently. The ground was mostly frozen, but there had been some sun to melt things, so maybe the snow was soft enough. Vo was concentrating on the horizon, not the turf. His job was strategic, not tactical.
That’s why he had Danville and Street out front. Killers he knew well.
“Cutlass Six, look alive,” Danville muttered. “Possible rabbit coming in your direction.”
Someone had been here. Cutlass Six had indeed picked up a heat signature through the wind and nastiness before it vanished off their sensors.
Vo studied the area. If the ground behind him had been manicured, this area had been feral. A forest left natural. Probably a favorite hunting ground for the owner. Or a Hundred Acre Wood. You never knew with rich people.
Vo called up the map in his mind and studied it.
