Last of the Immortals (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 3)

by Blaze Ward

  It was a Who’s Who of the Noble Lords who happened to be in the vicinity of Ladaux or, as Nils liked to class them, fools on the beach. Well–connected, but people Nils did not want commanding warships and fleets if he could avoid it.

  Today, they looked to be set to pay the First Lord back personally. Certainly, knives in the darkness.

  Working up the chain of self–imposed importance, the chairman of the committee, Senator Tennerick, had gone last. He was finally done, one hoped.

  Now the fun would begin.

  “The committee will call its first witness,” Tennerick began, bellowing into the microphone before him unnecessarily. “First Fleet Lord Bogdan Loncar.”

  Loncar.

  He had certainly dressed for the affair, wearing his best dress uniform, the one with all the medals and ribbons that made him look so pretty. Nils had explained to Tadej once, over brandy, that proper officers wore no more than a half–dozen of their most treasured ribbons and tags, in spite of being entitled to perhaps scores.

  Loncar looked like a preening peacock. Then he opened his mouth and sounded like one as well.

  “Members of the Senate,” Loncar’s whiny voice began. “I come before you today with great misgivings about the state of our beloved fleet. A state that can be laid at the feet of one man, someone who brought us here, to the very precipice of ruin, with this arrogance and blindness…”

  “My dear,” Tadej leaned over and whispered to the woman seated next to him. “I have already heard enough. I warned them not to try me over this.”

  He rose, offering her a hand, not that she needed it. Calina Szabolski might be the President of the Republic, but she had been a professional cyclist when she was young, and she retained the erect carriage and muscles of her youth. The shoulder–length silver–gray hair and piercing green eyes just accentuated everything about her.

  She smiled a secret smile as she rose and took his elbow.

  Tadej studied the tableau below him.

  The movement of standing had somehow gotten Tennerick’s attention. They locked eyes across the grand auditorium.

  Tennerick smiled at him like a wolf spying a chicken.

  We shall just see, shall we?

  Silence passed as he and Calina exited the chamber and were surrounded by a bevy of security personnel, both his and hers.

  “Tad,” she finally whispered after they turned a few corners and went down a back flight of stairs. “You aren’t going to do anything stupid, are you?”

  “Why, Calina?” he said with mock surprise. “You know me.”

  “Yes,” she agreed grimly, but with a soft smile. “I’ve known you for twenty years. You have that look about you.”

  “Indeed,” he whispered back. “Might I suggest that you remain close to your office and staff this afternoon? It’s been brewing for some time with that man. Perhaps we should just lance that boil and be done with it.”

  She glared at him sidelong, but remained silent as they approached his outer office.

  “Madame President, I must depart here. Thank you for a lovely morning. Perhaps we will be able to do a proper lunch sometime very soon.”

  Calina curtsied with a quiet giggle. “Premier Horvat. I await the news of the day with bated breath. Try not to ruin the carpets with your blood–letting?”

  And then she was gone in a cloud of professional security folks and jasmine perfume.

  Tadej watched her depart for a second with a smile, before his face transformed into something utterly terrible. He took a second to return to a neutral smile before entering his office. His staff had done nothing to fear him.

  Stacia looked up from her paperwork as he entered. After a moment, her eyes widened and her rich, dark skin paled.

  Perceptive. Bright woman. She has a future around here.

  “Stacia,” he said simply. “Please notify everyone to be in my office immediately, prepared to go to a war footing.”

  “On it,” she said, reaching for the comm. Calm, cool, professional, prepared.

  Yes, she would do nicely.

  Ξ

  The Premier of the Senate was a job with perks. One of them was a large staff. Fortunately, he had an even larger office, so they weren’t all cheek in jowl as they faced him.

  He turned to the woman who was currently serving as his chief of staff, the regular denizen of that office off skiing somewhere cold and lovely. There was no dead weight on his staff. Another perk.

  “Please send out a notice to all the Senator’s offices that there will be an extra–ordinary session of Question and Answer today, starting in two hours. Make sure you have someone personally deliver a written invitation and notification to the leader of the Loyal Opposition. Stacia would be a good person to handle that task.”

  He could almost feel her blush from where she was half–hidden in a corner. But her instincts on this had gotten him here ahead of everyone else. She deserved a reward.

  “Done,” the woman replied. “Next?”

  “Vacations are not going to be cancelled, at least not by me, but things are going to get interesting around here tomorrow, so you might all begin to rethink your fall plans.”

  A few faces got closed and canny. Old hands who understood tides. Most of the staff would catch on soon enough.

  Again, he had a head start.

  Tadej intended to play that edge mercilessly.

  Chapter XXVIII

  Date of the Republic June 14, 394 Jumpspace, Edge of the Ballard system

  “Stand by to crash launch,” Jessica said to her flag centurion.

  He nodded at her and continued to monitor all of the comm channels.

  Auberon shivered like a wet dog, for just a moment.

  Some people claimed that they couldn’t feel the transition into and out of Jumpspace. For Jessica, it was always like diving into a pool of warm water. Not painful. Not shocking. Just a transition from being dry to being wet, at least in her head.

  This time, the whole squadron had dropped in together, after a very brief layover a few light–years away.

  Plotting that jump had been an exercise in caution. Jessica could just imagine what it would have been like if she and the Red Admiral had managed to pick the same place to rendezvous.

  There were really only ten or twelve systems, if you wanted a star handy to navigate by. She could imagine having a dozen ships all arrive, strung out like pearls on a necklace, fighting as soon as they emerged. It would have been mayhem.

  She might have gotten lucky and had her whole team organized as Imperial vessels arrived one at a time to be gobbled up, but the gods of luck had not been smiling on Aquitaine.

  Or maybe they were. Nobody had been there. Hopefully, she had gotten here first as well.

  “Flag bridge, Sensors,” Centurion Giroux called from the main bridge. “I have a signal from CR–264 and Kigali. No Imperials have arrived yet. And he notes a need for priority communication when we get close enough.”

  “Understood,” she replied. “As soon as everyone is ready, we’ll hop down to the edge of the gravity well and rendezvous with him. We’ll outrun any signal we send now.”

  Jessica pulled up a display of the system, updating in real time as Auberon’s sensors took a deep drink from the river of data flowing around them. Ballard sitting quietly at the center. Alexandria Station overhead. Very little orbital traffic to be seen.

  It looked calm, peaceful, serene. Especially considering the hell that was going to erupt at any moment.

  Ξ

  Jessica sat at the head of the flag bridge table and digested everything Tomas Kigali had covered in his briefing. The faces of her command staff and various senior officers, present either physically or as electronic ghosts from their own bridges, evinced more shock, but there were knowing nods around the table as well. This wasn’t their first rodeo, or even their first encounter with the Red Admiral. Most of the people here had met him.

  Hell, the man had even sat at this table just months ag
o, for a briefing during the Promenade, at Bunala. He was something of a known quantity to Denis, Robertson, Tomas, Alber’ and the rest.

  Jessica glanced over at Arott Whughy.

  Most of the team.

  Stralsund was still something of a wild card. At least the man was taking the time to listen and understand before asserting himself and asking questions. In any other situation, he would have been in command. And probably done a credible job.

  Probably.

  The Red Admiral was her daemon to slay.

  “We’ll assume Wachturm will appear at any time,” Jessica said into the silence. “All crews will return to normal rotations, but be prepared to come to battle stations at any moment. If we stay deep enough inside the gravity well, we’ll have at least twenty to thirty minutes warning when he appears.”

  “What about Centurion Kermode, Commander?” Kigali asked with a strange lilt to his voice.

  Jessica let a single raised eyebrow ask for her.

  “I mean,” he continued, “we’ve probably done as much Mischief as we can at this point, short of just making more of everything, right?”

  “Correct,” Jessica agreed. “No point in taking any systems apart right now when we might need them in ten minutes.”

  “Right, but I have a system that needs to be put back together, and I figure she’s exactly the right person for it.”

  “What’s broken on CR–264?” Oz spoke up from his corner of the conference table. His tone suggested harsh words for that vessel’s chief engineer in the near future.

  “Oh, it’s not me,” Kigali quickly countered. “Suvi needs our help. She’s in a bind.”

  “The Sentience?” Jessica asked. The briefing had covered the damage to the communications systems. Station personnel should be able to handle fixing that.

  Why did he need Moirrey?

  Kigali’s voice sounded like she was a person to him, rather than a force of nature. But that was how Jessica always thought of her.

  “Yeah,” he replied. “We’ve talked a lot, her and me, and she has some peculiar needs. The folks on the station won’t have the array fixed for at least another week, doing it their way. I figure Moirrey can pull some sort of rabbit out of her hat. She’s good at that.”

  That got a round of chuckles from the table. Moirrey’s rabbits had kept them all alive. Hopefully, they would continue to do so.

  “What have you promised her?” Jessica asked.

  “Only that I would ask, boss. The Declaration of Martial Law has your name on it, at the end of the day.”

  Jessica felt her face grow serious and stern.

  “I’ll talk to both of them,” she said, before turning to the newest member of the team.

  She studied Whughy for a moment. He was tall and athletic, lean in ways similar to Kigali. Probably smarter. Certainly more serious in his overall approach to life. Well–trained, and well–recommended by the First Lord.

  She was afraid he was going to be too hidebound for what was coming. But she needed the big guns right now.

  “Is Stralsund prepared?” she asked. No more than that.

  He nodded to her, almost as serious.

  “If I read between the lines in the various briefing materials correctly, Commander,” he responded, “you expect that we’ll be wrestling a bear and trying to kill it with a pocket knife. Or perhaps, peeling an onion with a dull spoon, depending on the sequence of engagements. Lots of tears and blood before the task is done.” He nodded at her again. “Stralsund will hold.”

  He paused for a moment, turning to look at the rest of the people present before returning to her.

  “Can we win?” he asked.

  “He’s not doing this just to attack us, Whughy,” Jessica said. “Or even Ballard. This isn’t a simple battle for control of a planetary system, Stralsund. This is an attack on everything the Republic of Aquitaine stands for.”

  She paused to take in the others. The rest of her team was calm, but with her one hundred percent. They had been there. Most of them knew the next words that were coming out of her mouth.

  “If we fail, we will have died trying.”

  Chapter XXIX

  Date of the Republic June 7, 394 Ladaux

  Q & A was probably the actual beating heart of the Republic, regardless of what some historians and political experts might want to tell you. Tadej relished the time spent fencing verbally with the head of the Loyal Opposition in such a public forum.

  It was almost better than sex, some days.

  Tadej had diverged from custom today. Normally, he was entitled to enter the auditorium last, making the other Senators stew in their juices awaiting him, at least metaphorically.

  Today, he had made arrangements with Senator Judit Chavarría, the leader of the Loyal Opposition, for her to enter the arena of battle last.

  It would be more fun this way.

  Judit was a short, broad, fireplug of a woman, coming barely up to his chin physically, but certainly his equal mentally, if not his better. If some of her ideas weren’t so radical, he would have made a more heroic effort to recruit her to his own party, back when she first entered politics. Still, she was far more entertaining and capable than the poor fool she had replaced after the most recent elections.

  He waited patiently as she made her way down the stairs into the bowl of the old Senate chamber. It was standing–room–only today, as it should be, and everything was hushed.

  Pregnant with anticipation.

  She arrived across the table from him and smiled graciously.

  The table as a concept dated back to the homeworld nations. It was a meter tall and made of old lumber, carved richly and stained a dark brown. It was a useful place to pile documents to have at hand for such a day, when you might need to back up any statement you made with facts on paper. Something to wave at clowns on the backbenches when their laughter and derision got out of hand.

  It also served to keep the two sides apart. The traditional width was two meters, defined as the reach necessary to keep two buffoons armed with swords from being able to hit each other, unless they cast dignity to the wind and climbed onto the furniture. Presumably, other members of one Front Bench or the other would be at hand to keep someone from playing that great a fool.

  It had only happened twice in three and a half centuries.

  Tadej let the silence grow restive. He was going to enjoy this.

  Nervous rustling greeted him when he finally rose and took his place at the table’s edge. Judit did as well, facing him across the great intellectual gulf of polished wood, metaphorical blades drawn.

  “Premier,” she announced in that rich alto voice, echoing off the far walls effortlessly. “I understand that you require the members of the Loyal Opposition to wait attendance upon you this day. To dance merrily to whatever tune strikes your fancy. I ask you, what could be so important that it required me to cancel an appointment to get my nails done?”

  Both back benches erupted in laughter. Judit, unlike her many, more–politically–inclined predecessors, had hired a stand–up comedian as a staff writer. It showed. Q & A was certainly livelier. Some days, it was positively fun.

  “Senator Chavarría,” he replied, equally tartly, nodding severely as he did so. “Had I known the stakes of the day, I might have taken it upon myself to hold this news until tomorrow. Certainly, it was not my intent to so badly disrupt your social calendar. The matrons of Ladaux may never forgive me.”

  That elicited another round of laughter. It was dashing fun, having someone to rumble with in such a public manner, and yet be able to meet for dinner with the respective spouses and go to the opera together.

  That was how things got done.

  Tadej let his face grow serious, the opening barbs successfully exchanged. He reached down and opened a briefcase he had left out of sight on his side of the great, wooden wall. From it, he extracted a binder nearly seven centimeters thick.

  It made a rewarding thump when he slammed it dow
n onto the countertop, perhaps a touch harder than was appropriate. But the folks at the back of the room needed to know how serious this had gotten.

  Silence rippled outwards like waves. Ominous waves.

  “I have recently been forwarded the results of an internal investigation, initiated by Fleet Intelligence, into possible secret dealings between members of this very body and agents of the Fribourg Empire. It is interesting reading.”

  Quite interesting. Certain people had let their hatred of Nils Kasum and Jessica Keller get the better of their reason. Tadej had been sitting on this report against future need, hoping that the fools would see the error of their ways and learn.

  Apparently that was asking too much.

  Treason might be too strong a word. And then again, it might not. It still made a wonderful hammer with which to exact a terrible retribution.

  Tadej looked around the chamber until he found the nail he wanted.

  Senator Tennerick looked like he had sucked a lemon dry. He might have been better served if he had.

  “As with all such investigations,” Tadej continued, letting the rest of the room dangle, “it must, of course, be kept secret at the highest rating. However, I wish to enter it permanently into the private records of the Senate.”

  Where it would never be erased, or lost, or forgotten. Where it might even be made public someday, after everyone involved was dead, as such affairs were traditionally handled. These people were politicians, the kinds of people who put their names on buildings. You destroyed them by soiling their legacy. It was like killing their children. Easier, really.

  Tadej had a very big hammer.

  “After a preliminary review,” he said tartly. “It was my intent that this body should be called on to invoke censure on the Senators implicated, and that their immunity be set aside for the course of the investigation, as I intend to forward a copy of this report to the Grand Justice of the Republic.”

  The august body gasped as a whole. Tennerick actually smiled back at him, confident that his own allies in the chamber could successfully block such a move. They might be able to.