by Blaze Ward
As she turned to watch, a bunch more popped out from behind, spreading out on both wings like hunting dogs.
Huh. Pretty good driving trick.
But Vo’d only hired the old farts, so they knowed hows ta drive.
Would need crazy kids fer this stunt.
Rather than pounce, the wall of skiffs all grounded’n men poured out.
Cutlass Force. The craziest of the crazies, with the folks she ’membered from the old days.
Boys with guns poured out’n’took up positions. Guns pointed out, up, and a few in at her.
Professionally-crazy folks. She didn’t begrudge ’em that.
Big truck in the middle were the last to disgorge its prize. Cutlass Ten. The folks she really wanted here today. Everyone else were just icing.
Since thems had parked fifty meters away, she waited fer what folks were gonna to walk over.
She were insulated in her underarmor leathers from the chill air o’winter. Dudes were bundled up. Everyone walkin’ were wearing cold-weather gear.
Still too early in the morning, but soldiers was like that. Up and dawn and off doing stufffff. Parts of why she joined the navy in the first place, thank you very much.
Moirrey wiggled one last time and counted noses.
Vo were easy ta spot. Nothin’ on this planet that big moved like that.
Her Imperialness were next, with a half-dozen faceless goons in opaque faceplates that Torsten had rounded up as the beginning of the new Palace Guard. Apparently imported from one of the other palaces that had survived.
Iakov and Hans, plus the rest, with Victoria Ames on a corner.
Two other dudes added in. Musta been a tight fit in the back o’that truck.
Alan Katche she knew. Primus Pilus. Vo’s top bad-ass.
Other dude were the one she really wanted ta sees today.
Cohort Centurion Pyotr Martin.
Commander, Fourth Heavy Scout Ala, Mechanized. Drivers of crazy scout skiffs, stripped down versions of what the first three Alae drove, light fer speed, same guns.
Finds ya, fixes ya, calls in CCLXXIII Heavy ta smush ya.
Aquitaine Legions were three core plus one attached, with a Headquarters unit for five. 189th were three Alae of Armored Rifle, plus Heavy Scouts, plus Heavy Armor. Tuff’n’mean.
Reinforced.
If this worked, they’d be reinforcing some more.
Vo come to a stop and stared. Weren’t his show’n’he knowed that. Just here for visuals. And to protect Casey.
Casey were here ’cause stuff like this’d need boss-level sign-off.
Katche were here ’cause he were like that.
Martin fixed her with challenging eyes. Man dinna think girls were tuff’nuff. Mean’nuff.
Not killers.
Tall chick beside him could’a taught him betters.
“Jo, we green?” she asked over the line.
Face were staring at the bosses, but no external speakers yet. Needs space fer other stuff.
“Stay away from the Immelmann and you should be okay,” the kid replied. “Pretty sure you’ll start shedding vital parts if you try a hammerhead today.”
“Can do,” Moirrey replied.
She turned to the Imperial party, feeling about as alien as she probably looked. Stowed the sword as tall as she were by untelescoping it back to a simple handle and tucking that into a thigh sleeve.
She curtsied to the Emperor, grinned inside her helmet, and spotted the set of posts her dudes had uprighted to her left.
Two quick steps and Moirrey threw herself at the sky, praying to any available deities that all the lifters worked well enough that she missed the planet.
Right hand held the flight control buttons, such as they were. Up. Down. Fast. Slow. Hover.
Ya steered with yer hips’n yer toes, more than anything. Plus fins on calves that would pop up in a wind.
Feathers on the helmet were just for grins.
Moirrey let gravity lose track of her and pulled back, pushin’ the motors up a notch. Like Jo had said, every flight required almost as much prep as a fighter craft right now, but once ya locked in a profile for today’s weight and atmospherics, you were golden.
All sudden, she were twenty meters up, moving fifty kilometers per hour. Not much compared to a heavy tank er a skiff, but they couldn’t do this.
Quick dive with a roll and some yaw. Pike turn to reverse course in twenty meters, headed the other way full bore.
Watch the troopers on the ground get twitchy as she were about to come over them at too-low, too-fast.
’Nother turn. Softer, so’s they could track her. Pull out the sword pommel, carefuls not ta drop it an’look silly.
Turn it blade-rear before triggering.
She’d made that mistake exactly once, stalling so hard she near broke things meetin’s pavement when the suit stopped going forward.
Blade trigger, and now we gots two meters of two-handed, razor-sharp, Japanese craziness, weigh’n ’bouts as much as a pistol.
Line up the first post. Four meters tall, thicker’n a broom, but not much. We’re showing off here. Get crazy-stupids later, ya know?
Swoop.
Gods, but this was fun.
Focus. Count the timing.
Leans into the blow so’s ya don’t break yer bloody shoulder goin’ by.
Snap.
Like chopping apples, after a few tries ta gets the touch.
Heels down. Head up. Grab sky.
Think about the hammerhead, ’tils ya remember that Jo thinks you’ll fall on yer ass doing it.
Smooth turn over, instead of the crazy drop turn.
Orbits once fer effect.
Next pole is shorter and thicker. Timing still good.
Crack of metal through wood.
Pull right, start her pass on the third post.
Uh oh.
Just lost power on the right side. Left side suddenly accelerating.
Ground looks soft. This is gonna hurt.
Toss the sword well clear of the path yer about ta tumble through the grass.
Deep breath. Relax.
Boom.
Pretty sparkles.
Pretty people.
So glad the helmet is tight and filled with air.
And washed easily, to gets all the mud and grass off it.
Moirrey were surrounded when she figured which way were up.
She popped the lock on the helmet, separating the face piece from the back, so she could pull everything apart and see, optics and mud not mixin’ well.
“You okay?” Vo asked, squatted down to her level.
“Not the landing I had planned,” she observed dryly.
“Bonus points for originality,” he grinned, holding out a hand.
She took it and let him pretty much lift her upright. He were good at that.
Moirrey picked out Jo in the crowd.
“What failed?” she asked.
“Telemetry says a connection on the primary transverse coupling,” he replied.
She grunted. Damned thing was still too finicky. Maybe Yan could take a look?
Pyotr Martin stepped close and inspected her like a side of beef hanging from a rack. He walked all the way around her before he spoke.
Casey looked appalled, but she weren’t in for this sort of fun.
Martin came back into view and stopped.
“How close to ready is all this mess?” he asked in a hard voice.
“Me’n six dudes,” she gestured to her ground team. “One garage. Help from CCLXXIII Heavy’s motor pool Decurion. Three weeks from first weld. Just over a year since I dreamed it up and presented it to the Fleet Centurion.”
“Three weeks?” he gasped in astonishment.
“Yup.”
Martin surprised her by turning to Alan and Vo.
“I want a fourth Patrol added to the Ala,” he near-demanded of his bosses. “A whole team of the wildest kids we can find, dressed up like that.”
&nbs
p; He turned back to Moirrey, face INTENT.
“Lady Moirrey, your notes suggest that the team should be mechanized on a military version of zip bikes, yes?” he asked, breathless.
“Affirmatives,” she said, drawing herself up to full height. Which weren’t much. Dude were nearly Vo’s height. Maybe half his mass, though. “With Deadman switches built in, and remote flight controls added to the armor.”
“We’re going to need a new Ala design, Pyotr,” Alan tossed into the conversation. “Nothing like this in the Table of Organization and Equipment. Light Strike Scout?”
“Closer to Fourth Saxon. Start with that and adapt. Saves you time,” Vo said, drawing a nod from Moirrey and Alan. And two of her mechanics: Andre and Kiran.
Studied cowboys, did ya’s?
“What is all this?” Casey asked, a bit befuddled. “What have I just seen that has all of you so excited?”
“What Yan did to warships?” Moirrey said, catching Casey’s eye, and her nod. “I just dids to th’army. Boys’ll wanna play.”
Moirrey locked eyes with Trooper Ames, quietly standing off to one side, being all soldier-like’n’stuff. Got a grin, in spite of serious face over there.
“And girls,” Moirrey added.
Chapter XLIII
Date of the Republic Feb 22, 402 Forward Base Omicron
Jessica placed her hands flat on the inclined surface of the lectern and gazed out at her audience. All the senior officers from her squadron were gathered, listening rapt as she had gone over the intelligence her teams had gained. The main conference room was packed.
“Any questions?” she asked as she took a breath.
Stanovoy had been unbelievably successful, shattering the local economy and capturing a Hammerhead destroyer intact enough that they had been able to strip the corpse of all the parts they desired.
Technically, that included a prisoner, in the form of the Sentience itself, but Jessica had very pointedly not brought home the actual equipment needed to connect the half-dozen boards into a whole and rouse the beast. He would stay dead, preferably forever.
The rest of the Hammerhead’s crew had remained behind. Jessica had no need for more prisoners. All the information she had needed had been in the computer core and the equipment they had stuffed into the flight bay on II Augusta.
A hand went up, off to her left.
“Command Centurion Ihejirika?” she said.
The man who had commanded RAN Mendocino for the last decade and a half did so because he had found that to be his calling in life. Waldemar Ihejirika wasn’t a warrior. He was a shopkeeper. He just happened to bring supplies to forward bases and fleets, instead of keeping a five and dime somewhere in Penmerth.
In person, the man known as The Mailman was an average-looking Anglo, skin almost bleached by comparison to Jessica’s darker heritage. He had jet black hair that was straight, so she had always assumed some level of Diaspora Chinese in his family history.
“Technically, we’re operating under a Flag of Convenience, Fleet Centurion,” he replied, carefully ignoring the uniform of an Imperial Red Admiral she was wearing today. Possibly, reminding her of who they were. He had been with her long enough to do that comfortably. “But we’re still the Republic of Aquitaine Navy. Under what legal justification are we delivering this material to Fribourg, instead of hauling it to Ladaux?”
From the grunts and muttering around him, Jessica could tell that most of the people here had wanted to ask that question. Only her inner command: Denis, Enej, Robbie, Kigali, Tamara, and Alber’; really understood the whole story. The rest had only heard rumors.
She nodded succinctly to Waldemar, acknowledging his question as she looked for the right words. Casey would have had them on the tip of her tongue, but that woman was born a poet.
She still missed Casey’s bright face every morning.
“Because the war is over, Mendocino,” she finally said to him. “Someone we know and respect is going to sit on that throne, guarded by other people we trust. Centurion zu Wiegand will rule. Emmerich Wachturm will protect her. And Vo. If Buran defeats Fribourg, and they were doing just that before we arrived, then Ladaux would have fallen in our lifetimes.”
That got the response she was expecting. Angry growls and hoarse negations.
“Because Fribourg, for all its militant culture, fought their war predictably, and honorably,” she continued. “How many battles have been fought and lost for Samara? You can almost set a calendar by them. In their place, we’re going junkyard dog on that bastard, to quote Yan Bedrov. Some of you were there for the Long Raid, what those damned historians are calling Keller’s Raid, ignoring the contributions of Denis, Alber’, Kigali, and several thousand more of you who were with me. We’re not capturing worlds in order to force a peace with The Eldest. Karl VII was honorable enough to end the war after Thuringwell. This bastard has gone back to bombarding inhabited worlds from space. Emmerich Wachturm estimated twenty million people were killed in the first twenty-four hours, with something like two hundred million at risk over the course of a year.”
She paused long enough to grab a water bottle she had hidden in the lectern and suck down a cool mouthful. She could feel her own temperature going up as she spoke.
“That is not the mark of a civilized nation,” she stated flatly, curbing the fire before she breathed it out, dragon-like. “Fribourgers likes to think they’re tough, but before now, they never would have gotten ugly. Today, the problem is that they wouldn’t know when to pull back. That’s why they need us. We’re going to go in surgically, using terror as a weapon and devastation as a tool. We are not the sword. We are the sledgehammer. Their defensive squadrons, in places like Osynth B'Udan, live in terror of the next Buran raid coming to their world. But The Eldest can’t risk that while we’re rampaging through his hinterlands, destroying his own economy. And eventually, we will defeat him, or cause his own worlds to break away. Buran is not a hive. He is a single, God-obsessed machine. His fleets are other machines. Dangerous, but dominated by The Eldest. Without his own people, he can’t threaten ours. I want them more frightened of us than they are of their own overlord.”
Jessica took a deep breath.
“Did that answer the question, Mendocino?” she called.
Waldemar grinned.
“And then some,” he replied.
Several chuckles emerged.
Maybe Jessica had gotten a little wound up. Even she had never imagined that she would be so deeply entwined with the fate of the Fribourg Empire, but Torsten was going to become the husband she had never imagined finding, and Casey had turned into the daughter she never had. Perhaps even more so, now that the woman had lost her mother, the indomitable and irrepressible Empress Kati.
Jessica fixed her attention on the man seated next to Waldemar. The commander of Mendocino’s sister ship, RAN Duncan.
“Command Centurion Kovack,” she tagged him, causing the man to stir and sit up straighter.
Illiam Kovack was as short and squishy as Waldemar was tall and skinny. Kovack had a big, bushy beard, like the winter fairy, although still brown in spots. He did have the mischievous elf’s twinkling, blue eyes.
“Fleet Centurion,” he called back in a pleasant, tenor voice.
“We have their attention, Duncan,” she said. “Our next attack will be at Yenisei. Because Mendocino is leaving to haul loot back to Fribourg as soon as he’s ready, you’ll be on your own to mind the whole squadron.”
She gestured to the room around them, and the station itself.
“This station is packed to the gills with supplies right now,” she said. “Everyone in the squadron is going to carry as much as they can, and I’ll award prizes to the most creative logistics teams for packing, but you’ll still be hauling the lion’s share. It will be a mid-winter’s night, and your bag will have to have presents for every child in the squadron, good or bad.”
That twinkle was bright enough she could see it from clear up here. Some
days, she wondered if the man really was part elf.
“Stockings will be full on mid-winter morning, Fleet Centurion,” he said in as serious a voice as she had ever heard from the man.
“Any other questions?” she asked.
The room was silent.
“Then your weekend will be over in thirty-six hours and you’ll start seeing routing orders for supply shuttles and docking priorities to load.”
Jessica Keller looked out over the silent, intent faces staring back at her.
“And then, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going hunting.”
Chapter XLIV
Imperial Founding: 180/03/01. Imperial Palace (Temporary), Mejico, St. Legier
Casey had always walked quietly, even on gravel, so the old hardwood of the converted hotel’s upstairs hallway was nothing. The four men around her made even less noise as they moved, but that was partly due to the enclosed helmets they wore, allowing them to talk amongst themselves and the larger team outside.
She had perhaps finally gotten used to being surrounded by armed men every moment of every day.
At least Tobias Inmon had survived the devastation, and volunteered to return to duty. He had been her bodyguard in the Princess days, retiring to his farm when she went off and joined the Navy. He wasn’t in the field with her but had accepted a civilian promotion to head the armed side of her personal Household. He would keep her safe.
She paused outside the door to room two-forty-three.
The hallway hadn’t changed much since they took it over. The Hotel Arcadia had been a little long in the tooth and in need of refurbishment: new paint, new carpets. Love. The maroon rug beneath her feet was worn and starting to show threads. The art on a nearby wall was a watercolor beachscape done with more enthusiasm than skill.
Still, in her time of need, it had become an Imperial Palace, if only temporarily. The entire ground floor was given over to soldiers, servants, and bureaucrats, imported temporarily from other facilities around the globe. Mostly from Father’s favorite hunting lodge near Yuular.
Her government had offices and rooms on the second floor, it being just as easy to live and work here as to live here and evict some lawyers and accountants from empty space across Mejico’s main square.
