by Blaze Ward
“But now Digger is here,” Casey noted. “And Fleet Centurion Vlahovic was going to take the rest of the force to Jessica, leaving those two vessels waiting in orbit.”
“That is my understanding,” Vo said.
“So you have spoken with Palsgrave Chavarría, and asked her to contribute those two vessels to the war effort, that they could transport a Rapid Assault Legion, Reinforced, to the front, and into battle,” Casey continued.
“Yes, Casey,” he said, challenging her with his stare. “I will fulfill my promise.”
“I know that, Vo,” she let her voice relax, realizing she had started to become an Emperor again. She pulled back sharply in her mind. “Judit asked me for an official position. I had considered forbidding the entire enterprise, intending to keep you here, close to the throne, but then I spoke with Alan Katche.”
Jessica had described Vo to her as a deeply reticent man. How she had been speaking to him once and watched him bar the gate and lower the portcullis in his mind. Jessica had been reminded of the light going out in the refrigerator as the door closed, plunging the rest of the cabin into total darkness.
“Alan told me I would lose you forever if I did that,” Casey continued. “That it might be the one thing to actually make you angry in a way none of us had seen. Perhaps ever even imagined.”
She could taste the rage emanating from him now, that close to the surface but suppressed, by the way he didn’t move, except for his eyes dilating and relaxing in synch with his heartrate.
“That is the last thing I want, Vo,” she said, dropping her voice down even more, until it was barely a murmur. “I need you to know that. To acknowledge that.”
He nodded. Wary. Scenting the hunter, as yet unseen through the trees, but closing.
“Vo?” she almost pled with him.
“I hear you,” he offered.
It wasn’t much, at least from most men, but it was a sign that he was listening. Considering. Had perhaps withheld judgment, for now.
Father had never been so difficult.
Casey took a sip of tea, desperate to find the words to reach him before he set fire to the bridge across the moat.
“I wanted to work my way up to this conversation slowly, Vo,” she offered. “Pick the moment when we could talk as adults. But I have run out of time.”
“Only if you plan to thwart me,” he rumbled.
“And I will not do that, Vo,” she said.
“So you will approve it?” he asked in that hard voice.
“I intend to,” she said. “That is the official part of this conversation.”
She paused, still seeking the words. Vo surprised her by pulling his head back from where it had jutted forward like an ancient gargoyle atop a castle. As she watched, he settled more of his weight onto the sofa, threatening the old springs and pads with utter destruction under his mass.
“And the personal? Casey?” he asked.
If his voice had been emotionless marble before, it had turned to a winter wind now. Not cutting yet, but still threatening to flay the very muscles from her back if she turned the wrong way.
“It still has official overtones, Vo,” she suggested carefully. “And I cannot find a simple way to make my case, so I must be reduced to begging you to merely listen and not comment. And not judge until I’m done. Will you do that for me, Vo?”
Those hazel eyes turned to molten bronze as she watched them. She had never know Vo to be an emotional man, at least not around her, nor anyone else she had asked. Jessica had hinted at things, but always came back to the same resting point.
“It would be better to ask Vo directly,” Jessica would say. Or Moirrey. And Torsten, come to think of it.
Only Alan had dared speak for the man, and that only going so far as to paint a bright, red line. Cutting a mark in the sand and declaring, “You are no longer safe past here.”
“I will listen, Casey,” he conceded, leaning the rest of the way back and resting those broad shoulders against the back of the sofa.
Casey despaired, but Vo would not be turned by fancy words. Only the truth. That was the secret to this man. Any lies or deflections would just bounce off of his armor and reflect back on the speaker. All words would, but truths would never hurt, coming back.
Only lies.
“You promised the people of St. Legier vengeance, Vo,” she began in a low voice. “But it was not revenge. It was justice. I know you. You are all about justice. You did not promise to destroy them all, but to carry the sword to Buran. My sword. My people. But first you demanded love from them, from those cold, hard, Imperial citizens, nobles wrapped up in their class and superiority. And they gave it. Unconditionally. I never would have imagined that response. Not from those people.”
She paused, watching his face for any cues. There were none, but he had not grown angry or distant. She counted that as her first victory. A small one, but they would all be, with this powerful, terrible man.
“You are more beloved of the people than I am, Vo,” she continued carefully. “I have seen it in their faces. They will always rely on Vo zu Arlo to protect them, to shelter them from the storm. Even to avenge them. From the day I set foot on this planet again, I knew that my reign would be built with you as one of the cornerstones. As Em said to me on final approach, you are St. Legier.”
He nodded. Not in anything more than acknowledgement of the rightness of her words. The accuracy of her sentiments. He had seen it, too.
“And now, I must send you off to war,” she said simply. “To do anything less would be to lose you forever. As an emperor, I cannot risk that. Cannot risk the Empire itself losing something vital at the very moment when it is at its weakest.”
For a moment, those bronze irises flashed like molten gold. Triumph, she supposed. Perhaps he had come here expecting her to bargain with him over that task. Threaten to withhold her hand and make him carry through his terrible promises.
They were not threats, those words.
Casey knew better than to try his might. Easier to bargain with the hurricane winds than stand between Vo and his intentions.
“We must move past that point, Vo,” Casey continued. “Assume that you will go to war, carrying my sword into battle. We must talk about the time after that. When the war is won. And here is where all my arguments, all my logic break down.”
Confusion on his face, finally. All Vo’s emotions were amazingly close to the surface tonight. He was possibly as open as he had ever been, at least in many years.
She paused, waiting for him to move past his own victory and join her at the next plateau.
“Casey?” he whispered, unsure.
Unsure. Good. Vo zu Arlo’s surety was the strength that mountains grew jealous of.
“I cannot order. I cannot even request,” she confided. “For that would be just as bad as the things I am already guilty of. We all are guilty of.”
“Guilty?” he echoed.
“Nobody ever asks you what you want, Vo,” she explained. “Everyone assumes you will do the right thing, and do it regardless of the personal sacrifice. Alan and Arald Rohm have both spoken to me about what this task has cost you, saving St. Legier. For me to speak my mind right now, to make this a personal issue, would make me just as guilty, for you might decide that it is the right thing to do, putting yourself and your happiness aside for the greater good. I will not have that on my head. Not for this.”
“Casey?” he repeated.
She felt like a siren, luring this poor sailor onto the rocks. The only way to free him would be to stop singing, at whatever price she had to pay.
“What does Vo Arlo want?” she wondered aloud. “What is the thing that would bring him joy?”
And he closed in on himself, just like that. But this wasn’t an angry rejection. This was a man lost in shock and holding everyone and everything at bay while he furiously strove to master the whirling thoughts in his head.
In that, he had finally joined her, at least part
way onto that next plateau.
“Want?” he croaked.
Casey felt her chin come up and her shoulders pull back in defiance at the situation.
“Yes, Vo,” she challenged him. “What do you want?”
Silence fell, as she knew it would. Casey focused herself on the tea and ignored the small volcano rumbling ominously on the sofa. Vo was no threat to her at all. To either of them, as she glanced once at the nearly-forgotten Moirrey for reassurance.
They had spoken about this task for days. And agreed that there was no other way. None that would be successful, in any event.
“I don’t know,” he finally voiced with the slightest hint of wonder. “I do not know. It has been so long since…”
Those eyes bored in on her now.
“Even going to visit Holman was fulfilling an expectation,” he confided. “Letting the man know how I had turned out. But it was a thing I did for him, and not me.”
“When was the last time you did something for yourself, Vo?” Casey pressed.
Silence drawing out.
“Years,” he breathed finally. “Perhaps decades.”
“Just so,” Casey lamented, with as little bitterness as she could manage in her tones. “And now you will go off to war, because it is a task inherit in being Vo zu Arlo. It was what was expected of you, not necessarily what you wanted. A promise you made to others, based on a price they had been unable to pay. The cost of being you.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“So we must talk about the day that comes after the war, Vo,” she said. “I can ask you things, but I must be careful that they do not become duties you must endure for the greater good. They must be things you choose for yourself. On that day, and all days after.”
He had returned to silence, sipping his tea and seeking to master his emotions. She understood that place oh so well.
“When you have avenged St. Legier, I have hope that you would come back to me, Vo,” she admitted finally. “As Emperor, I have official reasons, but I also have personal ones, as a woman.”
“Ma’am?” he answered, a voice still tiny with distance.
“As Emperor, I know that you make me feel safe, just by being here, Vo,” she acknowledged, gesturing to the room around them and the planet beyond that. “Your terrible sword between me and all threats. But that is the official business, and we need to talk about the personal. And even that is official, to some extent.”
“Casey, I don’t understand,” he pled.
“You make me feel safe, Vo,” she implored, finally losing her own emotionlessness to reach him on that distant island. On the other side of the vast, bottomless chasm between them.
“As Emperor, and head of the Imperial Household, I must look to the future, and do so with a blood-thirsty, cruel eye, Vo,” she continued. “I must ensure the strength of my reign. And my line. There must be children to carry on the Empire. That is the official business that intrudes on my personal wants. But this is my personal desire. You make me feel safe. No other man does that. Has ever done that. Others see me as a prize to be sought, or an evil to be overthrown. To you, I am a symbol, I understand that. An esoteric object that must be protected and upheld. But you have never looked on me with covetous eyes. Never looked past me. If you have rarely ever looked at me, it was because the universe was making impossible demands of you, and I was perhaps one more thing to bother you, so you ignored me. But here, now, you make me feel safe. I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose you.”
She leaned back and remembered to breathe. Vo had gone chalky white, a color she could never remember for him.
“I could not wait until later to tell you this, because I must send you away now if I ever wish to have you back, Vo,” she conceded. “And I want you back. I want you to make me feel safe. I want to know that I have someone I can turn to with anything and never have to worry about them, because you are the most grounded human I have ever met. I want you to come back to me and stay with me, when you are done.”
She fell silent at that point, words simply exhausted.
Vo Arlo could not be coerced by force. Only by a guilt that would gnaw at her perhaps more than him, if he were to accede to her desires and sublimate his own.
How does one navigate the Scylla and Charybdis? The fine line between heart and mind, desire and duty?
She had made her case. Hopefully well enough, because tomorrow she would have to officially approve Em’s request to temporarily impress two Assault Carriers into Imperial service for a year so that they could take from her the thing that made her feel safest in the universe.
She would have to lose Vo, and hope that he would come back to her of his own volition, and not due to that immense sense of duty.
Vo blew out a huge breath and blinked too rapidly. He set his mug down on the side table a bit too roughly and nearly overturned both onto the carpet.
Rather than speak, he exploded to his feet and stumbled the slightest bit, towering over her like a redwood tree offering her shade. He stared down at her for one long second and then stumbled to the door with a heavy stride.
“Vo?” she implored.
“I will not say no,” he conceded heavily. “I will not say yes either. Not today. Perhaps not ever. But I will not say no.”
“When will I know?” Casey asked him.
“As soon as I do,” he apologized, opening the door and vanishing.
Casey let her own heavy breath go at that point. He had not repudiated her. Would most likely seek an answer for himself in the depths of the war itself.
But she would hold on to the hope that he would return to her, to stand beside the throne that would become her Imperial prison. Be the rock against which all storms would crash first, before reaching her.
She could hope that he would love her.
Epilogue: Forlorn
Date of the Republic Apr 06, 402 IFV Vanguard, Way Point Mercury
They had stretched their stay as long as possible, and then some, until they were well past the point of mathematical surety. Jessica watched the dark spot on her squadron screen like a tooth missing. All the others were present.
Everyone was dinged up to some degree. Even flying through a battle where you drew no fire caused systems to break down faster than normal. Wear and tear accelerating things. That was nature of war.
They had come out of jump in a tight cluster, spread out over only about ten minutes. Pretty good for this long of a hop and this many ships.
But one ship was missing. Had never emerged. As far as anyone knew, CS-405 had made it to JumpSpace with everyone else. Vanguard had actually been the last ship to escape, so Jessica had been able to watch the logs and scans as Kosnett and his ship vanished.
Four days later, they still had not arrived.
Jessica called up the full squadron channel and made eye contact with everyone’s images.
“As you know, we’ve lingered here long past our original intention,” she began slowly, as if, by magic, she could conjure the last duckling home. “CS-405 has not joined us in the allotted window, so we must declare her missing and move on.”
Muffled groans met her words, and she longed to join them, but this was the element of command. The lonely part.
“Kosnett and Lau know the itinerary and the plot,” Jessica continued. “If they can, they will make best speed. If we hadn’t just stirred up a hornet’s nest back there, I might be willing to send Ballard back to locate their trail, but we have nothing upon which to base our search and a vast number of very angry ships looking for us right now. Perhaps all of them.”
Jessica paused long enough to sip from the mug of coffee Marcelle had delivered with the last of the fresh cream. It would be frozen stuff from here on out, so she needed to appreciate it. And settle herself and her team.
“We have waited two days longer than normal,” she said. “Any repairs at this point will probably require teams from the Junkyard Chihuahua, so we must now sneak home.”
>
Another pause, locating the man she wanted amidst the faces.
“Kigali, in the absence of CS-405 to take the van, you have the flag.”
He nodded. Sharp and brief. She could see the way he was grinding his teeth at losing one of his own.
“Squadron, this is Kigali, aboard CA-264, I have the flag,” he said in a terse, angry voice. “All ahead standard on this heading and prepare for JumpSpace. Conform to CA-264, and I will see you all at Waypoint Babylon. Good luck, and Godspeed.”
Jessica nodded at the words. Kigali had turned into something of a poet and a fire-breathing preacher, as he brought the corvette team along to what he considered an acceptable level of professionalism.
Long gone was the laconic Navigator intent on his personal records. Kigali had thrown that all aside when he became the warrior monk commanding her escorts.
She paused as the ships began their slow acceleration into the darkness. As Vanguard vanished into JumpSpace, Jessica said a silent prayer for Kosnett and his crew to escape and make it home.
Standing orders required any disabled ship to be utterly destroyed, rather than risk capture. The same for certain officers who could be compelled to speak before a god. That was probably the hardest part of being an officer, but it was necessary.
On the projection above her table, in the space between she and Enej, Jessica projected near-space as it stretched out behind them, zooming and adjusting the image until she found the light she wanted.
There. A quiet, yellow-orange star in the distance. Once upon a time, nothing more than a long alpha-numeric designation identified the place, but Seeker and others had updated the navigational charts with more fanciful names, as humans tended to do, electronic gods notwithstanding.
Winterhome.
The lair of the Last Dragon. The implacable, ancient Sentience that had become the enemy of all mankind.
Buran, the Lord of Winter.
