by Blaze Ward
Jessica passed the time at the small workstation in her cabin, studying old battles the Republic had fought against Emmerich Wachturm. Everyone had done that at the Academy and after, but rarely had anyone done so with this degree of determination.
He was one of the greatest commanders in centuries of interstellar warfare, a man who made the impossible look easy, who found unexpected angles of attack that were plainly obvious in retrospect. The man who was probably personally responsible for the fact that the Fribourg Empire was currently winning The Endless War.
And she had to beat him.
Simple as that.
He had a battleship. And a battlecruiser. And a whole raft of smaller escorts.
And his legend.
She had a battlecruiser as well. And war–borne destroyers. And CR–264 to protect them.
It wasn’t enough.
She had Moirrey Kermode. And Mischief. And the element of surprise.
The Red Admiral had to know that, had to have planned for it. Much of what still remained classified were simply extensions of previous gimmicks, obvious if you spent time asking how to take it to the next level.
It still wasn’t going to be enough.
They were going to ride to Ballard’s rescue, proud and gleaming knights atop valiant steeds.
But this wasn’t going to be Agincourt.
It was going to be Thermopylae. She was going to take the Three Hundred into battle against the Persian Emperor and an army that shook the very earth when it marched.
The heroic Greeks would most likely die, perhaps having bought enough time to save the woman around whom all of this rotated, the AI named Suvi.
Jessica growled under her breath as she watched a projection of the Blackbird slowly rotate in space before her.
Wachturm did not get to win. It was Ian Zhao all over again. And Jing Du. Corynthe.
It was going to take everything she had. But they did not get to win.
Jessica stretched by rotating her shoulders ninety degrees each way. The clock on her desk surprised her when she glanced at it with a yawn. She had been awake for around fifty hours at this point, cat–napping twice for maybe thirty minutes at a stretch and surviving by pouring coffee tastelessly down her throat.
It had finally caught up with her.
Jessica checked for messages once more and then moved from her desk to the bed. She took a moment to take off her slippers and her tunic, stretching out on the rack in just her undershirt, pants, and socks. The chances of an emergency in dock were slim, but they were habits that would stay with her until she died, most likely.
She turned the lights down to a very dim setting where she could sleep peacefully, but where Marcelle could still navigate the room if she came in.
Briefly, Jessica wondered if Marcelle had put something in her most recent coffee to make her sleep. She wouldn’t put it past the woman, whose primary job was taking care of Jessica.
Her eyes grew heavy. She had been burning every candle at every end, these last two days.
And she would need the sleep. She still had to face The Red Admiral at Ballard.
Ξ
The air was suddenly warm, almost sticky. Her shirt was plastered to her back.
Jessica found herself standing in a small punt, a flat–bottomed boat, poling herself along what could charitably be called a swamp. The bottom was close enough under the muck that she could push herself along, somewhere.
Around her, trees were slowly being strangled by some sort of airy moss that hung like vines and spider webs, every way she turned. Reeds seemed to suggest a shore somewhere close by, but it was invisible from this distance. Bark on the trees was so gnarled with time that she imagined faces staring back at her, haunted, or alone, or lost. Exotic birds hid in the darkness and shade. They chittered and squawked in the brush, a cacophony of sound in the otherwise silent scene.
There was an open path before her through the trees, water lazily drifting towards some unseen and unknown sea. Jessica paused in her poling to look down at her reflection in the still water.
She wore all black. Everything black.
Tight pants tucked into thigh–high leather boots with flat, heavy heels. A long scarf tied around her waist, trailing nearly to her knees on her left side. A jacket–like tabard, almost a long–coat, but slashed to the base of her ribs on each side for easy movement. The sleeves down barely past her elbows, tucking tightly into a pair of soft suede gloves so black as to absorb life.
It was the sort of outfit Moirrey might have cooked up for her, had she evinced a desire to attend an All Hallows Eve party dressed in gothic darkness. Certainly, nothing one would find in her closet.
At least, she hoped not. This was a dream, she hoped. Anything was possible.
Jessica rarely dreamed. She knew that science said she did dream, and just didn’t remember it on waking, but she could remember very few dreams in her life.
Always living in the future, not the past.
The dream insisted she pole forward, deeper into the swamp. Jessica was never one to shirk her duty, so she put her back into it, easily balancing the punt as she pushed off.
It turned into a clearing. Or whatever the right term was when it happened to a swamp instead of a forest. She made a note to look the term up later.
If she remembered this dream.
The trees had faded back from the water’s edge slowly. Where it had been dreary, almost oppressive, now the sky opened up, a gap of several hundred meters across, with her in the middle.
The heavens were red.
Not the burnt orange of a lovely sunset back home when she was a little girl. No, this was the color of blood. The sun was either a brighter red, or hidden behind blood–red clouds, filtered but not lost. It had the dim quality of sunset, even as the sun approached zenith.
The silence had become oppressive. The waters were utterly still except for little wavelets she sent out as she balanced the punt. The bottom of the swamp was still close, but she could feel energy building, like an impending lightning strike.
Jessica shifted her grip on the pole, intent on using it as a spear if necessary. The day had that feel.
Ripples started around her.
Something emerged from the water like a snake, poised as if sniffing the air.
Another joined it on her left.
And then a third to her right.
She heard the splash of a fourth behind her, but could not look back without bracing the pole for stability.
There was enough sun to identify them now as they came towards her.
Tentacles.
Their skin appeared blue. Bright azure. Arms as thick as hers, probing, tasting.
Seeking.
They found the boat.
Latched on carefully.
Jessica considered striking at them, but they were not moving, once they found the wood of the punt.
Just holding on.
A larger splash to her right drew her attention.
An eye, larger than a dinner plate, staring at her from a mass of flesh larger than the boat she rode.
It had that baleful stare. She expected it to blink once at her, ominously.
Instead, the tentacles all torqued at once, spilling her out of the punt.
Jessica found herself falling.
Ξ
Jessica landed in the center of a perfectly flat black plane that seemed to go on forever. The sky was the gray of ash. There was no sun, the little–enough light filtered in from somewhere to see.
Jessica still wore black. Everything was dry, as if the swamp had never happened.
She supposed that it hadn’t, dream physics being something she had never considered before now.
A sound turned her head to the right.
The great blue creature with the tentacles was there. If a squid could swim in air, and reach a mantle length of six or seven meters, it would have appeared thus. It was a rich, royal blue in color, banded at the ends of the tentacles wit
h maroon, right where a human might have a wrist.
One eye tracked her.
Jessica was close enough for one of the tremendous arms to embrace her, but they pointed off to one side, as if the creature was swimming in a sea she could not fathom.
Just the baleful eye.
It did not speak, so Jessica remained silent as well.
They watched each other for seconds, minutes, eternities.
The creature began to change.
It was a subtle shift. Fading, morphing, altering.
Becoming.
It resolved itself finally into a shape Jessica knew well.
A beautiful woman with blue skin and long black hair, dressed entirely in black. She had four arms, double–shouldered front and back, with the rear arms much longer than the front ones.
In her hands a saber, a main–gauche, a severed head, and a floating planet.
Kali–ma.
The Goddess of War.
She resolved herself fully material, glowering down from a height of nearly five meters.
Jessica glowered back. Just being a goddess wasn’t enough to intimidate her. Not anymore.
The woman smiled down at her knowingly and began to fade. She did not move, but seemed to recede to a great distance.
The goddess began to transform at the same time, flowing subtly into a new shape, heavier, broader, bulkier. The shoulders widened, the arms on each side merged, the face changed.
In moments, Jessica found herself facing a new creature. This one was shaped like a man, but again five meters tall. The creature’s skin had changed to red, the hair brown.
He wore red and assumed a human form. One Jessica knew.
Emmerich Wachturm, if she had hired an artist to draw him as a horned daemon from the darkest hell imaginable.
The monster snarled down at her with a howling laugh that was painful to endure.
One arm reached down, a hand as big as her chest threatening to engulf her.
Jessica sidestepped the attack, blocking with the main–gauche she suddenly found in her right hand.
The monster took a step forward as she moved.
Jessica slashed with the saber abruptly in her left hand, felt it ring solidly off the creature’s flesh without drawing blood.
The daemon could not be killed with steel.
She blocked his other clawed hand and danced backwards as he growled and tried to grab her again.
Emmerich Wachturm. The Red Admiral. Daemon made flesh.
Jessica growled back at him.
He was not allowed to win.
Simple as that.
Jessica swung her second right hand forward, aimed at the daemon with the short rifle she held and fired a blast.
Second right hand?
The flesh on her arms had turned bright blue.
The rifle was a fléchette, firing a handful of explosive darts that tore the monster’s flesh when they hit.
The howls of rage turned to sudden cries of agony.
In her second left hand, Jessica held a beam pistol unlike any she had ever seen before.
She laughed at the fiend as she aimed. Jessica felt herself growing in stature as she did, until she met him eye to eye.
Time slowed down.
He tried to rush her as she aimed the pistol. The shot was brighter than the non–existent sun in this dismal place. It struck the daemon square in the center of his chest and bored straight through. The pistol ejected a spent cartridge and cycled another power disk into the chamber.
It looked like a tiny little miniaturized Primary generator, but Jessica knew instinctively that it was normal sized, and the two combatants were the size of starships.
The shot slew the daemon.
A hole opened beneath his feet, sucking him back down into whatever hell had spawned him.
A claw grasped at her ankle before she could evade him.
Too quick to react, Jessica found herself drawn into the hole as well.
Jessica fell.
Ξ
Jessica awoke with a cry of terrible anguish. Falling had been a surprise, but Jessica knew that many dreamers awoke from falling.
“Nightmare?” Marcelle asked quietly.
Jessica was back in her cabin. Marcelle was sitting in the comfortable chair in the corner, reading a book of some sort and keeping watch over her sleeping charge.
“Of a sort,” Jessica replied, trying to breathe.
“Need coffee?”
Coffee. The cure for almost everything.
Almost.
“No,” Jessica said, rubbing her face to wake up. “Juice, please?”
“Coming up.”
Marcelle closed the book and rose in one fluid motion, exiting the cabin in three long strides and leaving Jessica alone.
Not a nightmare. She had been fighting daemons in her sleep quite a lot, these last few months.
No, the anguish was the loss of her second arms.
For a moment in time, in the dream, she had been a goddess.
Chapter VI
Date of the Republic May 29, 394 Fleet HQ, Ladaux System
“What do you think?” Auberon’s pilot, Nada Zupan, asked, looking back over her shoulder.
Denis had a moment of shock, watching Nada’s ponytail bob. It had gotten almost down to her kidneys, where she had kept it barely to her collar for as long as he had known her.
It reminded him of Jessica. Her hair was getting that long, as well.
Denis wondered if all of them were unconsciously imitating her. Not necessarily the worst role model to have, all things considered.
Denis paused and checked his boards.
“Marcelle has a Do Not Disturb on Jessica’s key,” Denis said, “so maybe she’s finally sleeping.”
He considered the rest of the Roster board. He pushed a button at the side.
“Security, Tawfeek here,” the voice replied over the audio channel.
“This is Jež, on the Bridge,” Denis replied with a simple smile on his face and in his voice. “Can you locate the flag centurion for me?”
“Stand by, sir,” Tawfeek said.
A moment passed.
“Uhm, sir, are we on a private channel?” Tawfeek continued.
Denis raised an eyebrow as he looked at the microphone. He keyed the audio suppression system in his command chair.
Why did we need a private channel?
“You are now, Tawfeek. Go ahead.”
“Right, sir. According to my systems, Mr. Zivkovic is currently located in the private quarters assigned to Flight Cornet Nakamura. And if I might suggest, sir, unless this is an emergency, you might want to wait five or eight minutes?”
“Nakamura?” Denis said, surprised.
“Furious, sir,” Tawfeek replied quietly.
Why did he need to wait…? Oh. Right. Yes. Not that important.
“Thank you, Tawfeek,” Denis said. “I’ll talk to him when he’s on duty next.”
“Acknowledged.”
The line went dead.
Denis chuckled to himself briefly before he put on his serious face and cancelled the audio suppression.
Nada had a knowing grin on her face when he looked up, but nobody else on the bridge seemed to be paying attention.
“Seems like we’re in charge, Nada,” he said. “Thank Flight Control and the Quartermaster for getting us loaded ahead of schedule, then notify everyone else that we’re heading out. I’ll let you be flag centurion for a while and coordinate movement with Stralsund and the destroyers as we back away. Then plot a best–time run to the edge of the gravity well and get us to Jumpspace as soon as possible. The Red Admiral is waiting.”
Nada nodded and began to play her symphonies on the board in front of her. Auberon responded with the creaks and groans of a warship preparing for maneuvers.
To Denis, it sounded like old tack on a horse, during a cold winter morning, back on his grandfather’s farm.
Auberon was going to war.
Ξ
Moirrey looked up blankly as someone touched her on the shoulder. For a moment, total darkness, until she remembered to flip up the welding mask.
The chief engineer, Senior Centurion Vilis Ozolinsh, stood patiently beside her workstation, hands crossed across his back and a serene smile on his face.
“Yeah, Oz?” Moirrey asked, slowly coming back to the room around her. It felt strange to be in the present tense again.
“Newly–promoted Centurion Kermode,” he began with a wicked smile, his accent the perfect clipped tones of the best schools, “I feel as though I am repeating myself. But then, we’ve been here before, haven’t we?”
Moirrey blinked again and glanced around her.
The workstation was piled with paper printouts and strange little bits of gear. Her welder that she slid home into its little carrier, the one decorated with sparklies and bangles. A working model of the miniature Harpoon fighter remote that they had used to test the Archerfish, before Petron. Other half–finished ideas made tangible parts.
And Oz, standing there serenely.
“That we have,” she smiled back.
“So, young lady, we shall shortly find ourselves at the sharp end of the stick again. Will it work?”
He gestured expansively to the pile of semi–junk that seemed to be taking over every flat space in the area. The latest miniaturization project sat patiently under the magnifying work lens.
“I dinna think the Red Admiral will be expectin’ this one, Oz,” she said. “Petron were one thin’, but Mischief keeps needin’ ta betters. Already smacked him on the bum hard once. He’ll no fall a second time. Best to keeps him guessin’, rights untils we go sideways on ‘im.”
“Very good,” Ozolinsh replied. “How soon until the first batch is ready to test?”
Oz already had six of the top ten High Scores from the testin’ afore Petron. Another batch of Mischief to play before invitin’ the pilots aboard to play were just right silly. The man were a natural fer ‘is sort of thing. Shame he were never interested in pilotin’ for reals.
Or maybe nots. She’d’a likes to had a spit–and–polish boss, otherwise.
BORING.
“End o’th’shift, Oz,” she chirped. “If you can find someone on swing to mount ‘em and wire it up, we should be ready to play Red Baron in the mornin’.”
