by Blaze Ward
“And this, the Manticore,” he continued. “Named for the ancient Persian monster with the body of a lion, the head of a man, and the tail of a dragon that shoots poisoned spines at its target.”
Oz smiled wickedly.
“The entire craft is actually a missile, Commander,” he said. “We used a spare control system and wired it in to run autonomously. When launched, it will fly in the direction programmed, until it either comes within a preset range of a target, or until a command is sent from Auberon. At that time, it will sequence out all of the missiles in rapid succession at a designated target or range of targets.”
“And the blue one fires first?” Jessica asked, intrigued.
“One of Moirrey’s Mark II Archerfish, sir,” he replied. “I will let her explain.”
Moirrey stepped up and caressed the hull in a manner similar to how Oz had done. It was almost perverse.
“You gots a wall of doom comings, ma’am,” she chirped, her accent growing denser as her excitement grew, “yer gon’ reply with every defense missile ya gots loaded. Right shame if a wee somebody blows them all up before they did nothin’, ya knows?”
Jessica considered the implications and the tactics. It was an incredibly, monstrously expensive way to fight a battle, even by everyone’s normal standards of missiles, primaries, and fighters.
That would count doubly so when modern training and naval architecture revolved around the fleet escorts, the frigates and the destroyers who escorted the larger vessels, the queens of the battlefield, into action.
But it was also going to be a very rude surprise for Admiral Wachturm.
And it would probably only work once.
They only needed it to work once.
It would be neck or crown when facing the Red Admiral at Ballard.
Chapter XII
Date of the Republic June 8, 394 Jumpspace en route to Ballard
The tiny forward conference room aboard Stralsund was just fore of the bridge, which generally meant it was used more than the primary conference room down a deck and a little aft.
It was second shift right now, so Arott had his senior officers available while the ship flew through the night of Jumpspace: first officer Doyle MacEoghain, tactical officer Galina Tasse, chief engineer Tiyamike Abujamal, and Stralsund’s pilot Ya'rah Mhasalkar.
“Okay, folks,” Arott said to bring things to order and pointed to the folders everyone had brought with them. “You’ve had some time to review the Mischief file provided by Auberon before we left. Thoughts?”
Galina spoke first. She did that. “On the one hand, Commander,” she said in her brusque tones, “it represents an absolute upheaval in modern warfare, at least until the Imperials come to grips with it and initiate counter–measures.”
“And the downside?” Arott always expected the other shoe to drop with his tactical officer. That was who she was.
Galina could have been a model, she had the height and beauty, but she loved to blow things up too much. One of these days she would probably settle down and marry a politician or Fleet Lord. It was not today.
“It’s completely insane, risk/benefit ratio–wise,” she concluded. “This is Wachturm we’re going to engage. He’ll see through it.”
“No, he won’t,” the first officer contravened her quietly.
“Doyle?”
Arott watched the man take a deep breath, looking for the right words.
“Okay, everybody knows he’s the best Fribourg has, right?”
Heads around the table nodded.
“But have any of you really studied Keller’s Raid? I mean in detail?”
Heads shook. These people were professionals. Sensationalism in the media was nothing to listen to.
“Thought not,” Doyle continued. “I asked a friend in the First Lord’s office to burn me a copy of Keller’s operational report from Lincolnshire and Corynthe. Been reading that every spare moment.”
Arott looked at his first officer a touch askance. That was getting very fine with ethical standards and legalisms. It was probably the right thing to do, all things considered, but it could be made to look bad in the wrong light. Stralsund didn’t do things that way.
“What did you find?” Arott asked carefully, knowing that he might be abetting the crime, but unable to look away, like at a traffic accident.
Doyle tapped the table–top as he made his points. “So, Third Iger, all of Keller’s Raid, culminating at Qui–Ping, then you move on to Sarmarsh IV and First Petron. I compared Jessica Keller to Emmerich Wachturm, since they represent key recent campaigns where they were on opposite sides of the planning.”
Doyle took another breath, almost pained.
“I think she’s better than he is,” he said.
The room exploded in sound.
“Hear me out,” Doyle cried over the noise.
Arott got everyone settled with a harsh look. They were supposed to be professionals here.
“What makes you say that, Doyle?” Arott asked quietly.
“Like I said, we all know Wachturm is the best the Empire has, right? Everybody agrees on that point. It’s just that, when I look back at those battles, every single time, he goes for the linear approach. At Third Iger, he hid a couple of carriers on the backside of a small moon to jump out and ambush the carriers. But he had to have known that Loncar was in overall command and that a stunt like that might work. Someone like Nils Kasum or Jessica Keller wouldn’t have fallen for such an obvious set–up. They might have even handed him his ass.”
“What’s your point, then?” Tiyamike Abujamal, the chief engineer, spoke for the first time.
“I think Wachturm is just phoning it in at this point,” Doyle said earnestly. “He’s been relying on the other guy making mistakes. Or being utterly hidebound. Doing stupid things and letting someone like Admiral Wachturm pounce.”
Arott was listening with half an ear as he flipped the folder open to some of his notes. Come to think of it, his notes as he reread them tended to agree. Linear thinking. Exotic, but within norms. Where’s the genius who used to frighten us? Standard Imperial tactic. Etc.
“So where does that leave us?” Galina had that stubborn look in her eyes.
Arott spoke up first. “It leaves us with a trump card, people.”
He speared each of them in turn with a look. It was a hard look, from the man who commanded arguably the best ship in the Republic of Aquitaine Navy, the pride of Home Fleet.
Stralsund was the best. It behooved him to remind people of that occasionally.
“Two, actually,” he said after a moment of thought. “First, he’s expecting some variant of Mischief. On that, we can all agree, yes? Keller has staked her career on Centurion Kermode’s artistry. It’s gotten her this far, and we know she and Kermode are going to pull out all stops at Ballard.”
Heads bobbed in agreement around the table. Arott pointed at his folder.
“Second, we’ve got firepower almost as good as a battleship. We don’t have the shields to go toe–to–toe with IFV Amsel for very long, but we have maneuverability he doesn’t.”
Arott turned to the pilot, up until now silent.
“Mhasalkar,” he said simply. “I know you never wanted to be a fighter pilot, but I’ll need Stralsund to dance like a GunShip when we get close.”
“Close?” Tasse asked tartly. “How close were you planning to get?”
Arott flipped his folder to a specific page, spun it around, and pointed.
“The tactical implications of that weapon, right there, Galina,” he replied, “suggest knife fighting with Primaries. Close enough to spit on someone. I expect Stralsund might end up close enough to the escort frigates that they open up on us with their Type–1 defensive beams as we go by, instead of shooting at something more important.”
Arott turned to his chief engineer.
“How much power can you put through the shield generators without having them fail in the middle of this fight? Mendocino will
be along after the battle, so we can fix everything the next day, assuming we survive, but this might be the battle where Stralsund gets hammered into a six month drydock. Let’s treat this like one of the epics going in, people.”
Senior Centurion Abujamal got a pensive look in her eyes. Her eyes were already dark, as was her skin, so he could never tell if she paled or flushed. Not that she ever registered much emotion. Engineers were like that. Good ones, anyway.
“There is a list of ideas,” she began. “A Bible, if you will, of crazy things you should never do in anything but the most extreme circumstances.”
“Crazy?”
“Passed from chief engineer to chief engineer, down through the ages, Commander,” she replied with a hint of a smile. “The really risky, stupid things they only briefly mention, mostly with warnings, in engineering school. I’ll need you to sign an authorization form ahead of time.”
That brought an eyebrow up. Arott started to say something, but she interrupted him.
“In peacetime, chief, the first nine on that list are guaranteed to bring you up before a court of inquiry. Even in battle, at least three are good for court martials, if you survive.”
“How many are likely to blow us up?” Arott asked, just a touch sarcastic.
Abujamal got very serious instead.
“The odds are generally less than one in six,” she said quietly. “At least until we start taking damage. Then it gets interesting. Is it worth it?”
Arott took his staff in with a serious look.
“I expect,” he said sternly, “that based on Keller’s reputation, we’re going to be at the sharp end of the stick, going at it with an Imperial battleship and a battlecruiser. We’ll have the two destroyers and Auberon’s flight wing backing us up, and maybe even Auberon herself, but we’re going to be the point of fire for a lot of enemies. So yes, it is worth it.”
He turned to the engineer.
“That reminds me, MacEoghain,” he continued. “Did you have any suggestions on hiring our own Advanced Research Weapons Tech?”
“I’ve given it some thought, Commander,” he replied, somewhat evasively. “I think Stralsund might be exactly the wrong vessel to have such a person hidden in the lower decks.”
“How so?” Arott wasn’t all that angry with the man. He had come to a similar conclusion, privately.
“Sir, the kinds of creative artist types, the bohemian engineer, if you will, they don’t really fit well with a spit–and–polish unit like ours. Very few get assigned here. Most of them turn around and pretty quickly transfer out to smaller vessels, and generally not on the war frontier.”
“Nobody? Not a single artist down there?” Arott asked seriously.
His first officer shook his head.
Arott nodded.
“When we get back, Doyle,” he said, “we’re going to change that.”
It wasn’t exactly a failure on his part as a commander. Not really. That was how the fleet worked.
He could tell, however, that Jessica Keller was going to up–end things.
If he wanted to continue to be among the best, he would have to learn from the best.
Chapter XIII
Date of the Republic June 2, 394 Ithome, Ballard
The evening had turned out to be even better than the day, with warm temperatures slowly fading to mildness under clear skies as Sykes walked across the courtyard of the tower. The entire body of the galaxy stretched overhead, a road of white stars running across three quarters of the sky tonight.
McClaren’s, it turned out, occupied the top three stories of the thirty–seven–story Sandy Head Tower. The view from the bar was simply stupendous. Sykes could see the open ocean beyond the sheltering wall across the far side of the bay.
He had dressed the part this evening of the well–bred fop turned book collector. Slightly tweedy. A touch fussy. A boring if expensive suit. A glass of local red wine in one hand as he watched the room.
There was a game he played in settings like this, with crowds in bars, when he didn’t have a specific mission. Sykes had spent nearly ten minutes calculating the fastest and most efficient way to kill every single person in the bar, from the burly bartender to the accountant in the corner hunkered over his salad.
It kept the reflexes sharp.
Krystiana Lemieux made an entire scene by herself when she entered, greeting the bartender and half the waitstaff by name, carried on the arm of the impetuous little man who managed McClaren’s, the master of ceremonies seeing everything done just so for one of his special customers.
Sykes rose from his spot against the corner of the bar, and met her and her escort halfway. A book collector would be too fussy to kiss her on both cheeks, so he did not, settling for a simple handshake amid a swirl of abject flattery until the manager led them to a corner table and departed.
The view from here was even more spectacular. The original architect had demanded the engineer fold a single transparent sheet, obviously not simple glass, around a hard, square corner, leaving them with a view of all of the bay in one direction, and the southern portion of Ithome, plus the suburbs, in the other.
The wine steward and waitress were dealt with in short order.
Sykes found himself seated across from his contact as the restaurant’s tide of restless energy receded. He had not taken great note of the woman as she had entered, focusing most of his concentration on everyone else around him, looking for other spies that might represent danger.
He took the time now, letting the calm silence stretch.
Lemieux had treated the evening, and his expense account, as an excuse to dress to the nines. It wasn’t his money, so he didn’t care. The results had been worth the risk of appearing in such a public venue. Nobody would even remember his face tomorrow.
She was wearing an outfit that was entirely backless, largely frontless, and appeared to be comprised of two pieces of bright green cloth, tied behind her neck and just wide enough to cover her small breasts from casual observation, provided she did not move suddenly. At least intentionally. The color complimented her dark brown skin.
The top was attached to a skirt cut asymmetrically, from her left knee to her right ankle, in a manner that should have been disturbingly wrong, but somehow worked.
She had taken the time to do her hair and makeup as if she were preparing to appear on a videocast.
While this woman was not a great traditional beauty, the effect was memorable. Men were glancing as subtly as possible at this woman, craving her as an object of outright lust. Women, if any more circumspect, were more likely to be staring daggers at her, or their dates. Probably both.
If anyone even remembered that there was a man with her, he would simply fade from memory.
Sykes had spent decades perfecting that technique.
He nodded to himself.
“This is within your normal range of expected public behavior?” Sykes asked her. They had several minutes before the salad course.
She smiled around a piece of fruit she was nibbling from her mixed drink. The face was that of a debutante. The voice was deadly serious. The smile never wavered. They might have been discussing the latest fashions as far as someone could tell from farther away.
“Entirely,” she replied in a tone that suggested he should use his tradecraft to teach his own grandmother to suck eggs. “You are a wealthy off–world client that needs entertaining while we discuss outrageous prices for First Editions and dicker values against the possibility of fraud in the author’s signature.”
That caught him off guard. Sykes had never dealt in rare books. He had no idea how rampant that sort of corruption was. But then, he was an assassin, not a literary critic. Although he supposed that the two might not be that far removed, all things considered.
He nodded as a placeholder. This woman was a highly respected deep–cover agent. Obviously, she would know the proper bounds of behavior for a place like Ballard. He was the blundering outsider, reliant on a loc
al to know the shoals and reefs.
In that, the rules and relations would be the same.
“This mission may compromise your cover to the extent that extraction is necessary,” he said to fill the space.
She continued to nibble at the fruit with a coquettish tilt to her head. From across the room, a bubbly airhead serving as eye–candy for a wealthy businessman.
“So you are either assassinating the governor,” she said without a trace of emotion on her face, “or attacking The Station.”
The way she said it suggested that there was only one station in orbit. In a way, that was true. Almost every inhabited planet had at least a half–dozen orbital platforms of various sizes, for transshipping or manufacturing. Ballard was no different. But there was really only one that mattered here.
“The latter,” Sykes said and took a sip of his wine.
She smiled as if he had just told a droll joke, but her eyes never changed.
“How grand of an attack are you planning?”
Sykes let his own smile turn frosty. “I will be a distraction and a guard at the rear door to keep someone from escaping. An Imperial Fleet will be arriving in approximately two weeks to destroy the station.”
He watched her eyes grow slightly larger. She did not actually speak the words aloud, but he could read her lips as she repeated Imperial Fleet to herself.
Finally, she spoke.
“And who are you here to assassinate?”
“The Sentience.”
“You’re going to kill Suvi?” she whispered in sudden awe. “Is that even possible?”
“We are going to find out, madam,” he replied with a pleasant smile. “That is my mission. To kill Suvi.”
Chapter XIV
Date of the Republic June 2, 394 Fleet HQ, Ladaux System
“Are you sure?”
Nils scanned the report again, as if the words would change the second time he read them. The temperature in his office seemed to have dropped ten degrees in as many seconds, although he was sure it was just him.
