Auberon (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 1)

by Blaze Ward

  “Correct, Vanek,” Jessica interjected in the gap. “It takes one hit to wound you, and generally three to kill. Two is iffy, depending on the location, but I agree with your assessment.”

  “Aye, sir,” Vanek replied. “The Strike Carrier, our lady Auberon, seems to have a design flaw. They exploited it at Simeon. All’s fair in love and war, but I’m not sure how we can survive if the Imperials do the same thing.”

  Jessica felt herself dropping back into Tactical Instructor Mode. She could hear Kasum’s voice coming out of her mouth. It felt weird.

  “Describe the scenario, Nina,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the tiny woman reached out and powered on the projector. Auberon and her escorts appeared in blue. The enemy drones were green. It played a high speed loop that ended with several simulated explosions along Auberon’s right flank.

  “According to the standard tactics manuals,” Nina continued, “we were subject to what they call a Saturation Overload. They can put more missiles in the air than we can kill, unless we hold back part of the flight wing, and keep at least one escort in close. It’s why Fleet Carriers normally have so many escorts around them. Strike Carriers are even more vulnerable.”

  “And that’s why they so rarely go into direct combat,” Jessica agreed. “How would you prepare for it?”

  Nina’s face screwed up in concentration. “If we were expecting it, we could cycle the missile launchers down and keep a shot missile in the primary slot. One of those will disrupt either a wing of fighters, or, like we got hammered with at the range, a flight of missiles.”

  “Correct,” Jessica replied, “what’s the downside?”

  “We functionally lose one or both of the missile launchers by shifting into defensive mode. Cuts down on our killing power right at the time we need it most.”

  “Exactly, Centurion,” Jessica felt her mood soften. “That’s why they do that. This is generally a no–win scenario for a Tactical team. It’s one of the things Lane 4 is designed to teach you.”

  “Aye, ma’am,” Nina replied quietly. “But Burley had an interesting solution.” She touched one of the books in front of her.

  Jessica blinked in surprise. There might be a way to beat a Saturation Overload?

  Jessica noted a piece of paper marking a page. Nina Vanek flipped the book open and shoved the table across to her.

  Jessica considered the words of a tactical prophet dead nearly five hundred years.

  Interesting.

  “So, Vanek,” she asked as she finished, “how would you suggest we implement it? Burley’s idea of putting a spare missile launcher in to replace one of our shuttle bays won’t work unless we lose the ability to crash–launch the flight wing easily.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But what if we did this?”

  Vanek toggled the projector to bring up a schematic of Auberon, slowly rotating along her long axis. A blister along her spine turned red and transformed into something else as they watched.

  “This is the secondary observation tower, commander,” Nina said quietly. “I checked the logs and the last time it was officially used was eight years ago. And then only to verify that it still worked after the last major overhaul in drydock. The need for such a tool dates back thousands of years, to a time when artificial life–forms controlled most spaceships. If your ship’s personality died, you had to calculate everything manually, using a real, honest–to–Creator, glass telescope, a mass spectrometer, and a stellar encyclopedia.”

  Jessica leaned forward and touched the projection. It stopped and swelled out.

  “Go on,” she said, intrigued. She had never heard of someone taking Burley this direction.

  “So if we remove the telescope from the armature and insulate the room, sir, we could weld a missile rack on instead. Wire it up to the defensive array, and we could pop it open when we went into combat. Put a pair of shot missiles on them, and we’ve got a really nasty ace in the hole next time someone tries that trick on us.”

  Jessica leaned back and considered. There was nothing in the regulations about removing the secondary observatory. As Nina said, it was a tradition dating back to computer automation, before navigators had to memorize routes and stars in order to do their jobs. The Dark Ages of The Immortals. The Artificially Intelligent Lifeforms. Before mankind had outgrown them.

  She considered the design and layout of the new weapons system.

  “How long have you been working on this design, Centurion?” Jessica asked.

  “It came to me this morning in the shower, ma’am,” Nina replied, apparently trying to shrink in on herself.

  “This morning?” she said, surprise evident in her voice.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Have Ozolinsh dedicate one of his engineers to the design,” Jessica said. “We’ll have a meeting with the engineering staff in three days and see what it would take to make it work. One thing, though. Everything has to be able to be replaced at the end of the tour. Dismissed.”

  “Aye, sir,” Nina smiled and rose. She gathered all of her materials under her arms and practically skipped out of the room.

  Jessica smiled. At least something good was going to come of this day.

  She hoped.

  Chapter XII

  Date of the Republic October 10, 392 Jumpspace outbound from Simeon system

  The room normally served many purposes, including training classes and design labs. Today, all of the workstations were turned flat. Only the big screen at the far end was active.

  Jessica looked down the long conference table in the Engineering design bay at the people who shared her space.

  Engineers sat along both sides of the table, coming in every shape and flavor, down to Nina Vanek and one of Ozolinsh’s engineers standing in front of a projection that slowly rotated.

  The woman standing with Vanek might be the only person in the entire crew Nina’s size. She wore a Yeoman’s uniform that came in the smallest size available and was still baggy on her. Jessica thought the woman might be half a head shorter than her own short height. And she fairly radiated pixie, with a slim, petite build, and a smile that could warm up a room.

  “Any questions?” the black–haired beauty asked. She spoke with a strange accent, almost barbaric in its slurring of consonants and stretching vowels out. Jessica presumed, without looking, that she might have been born in the borders beyond the edges of the Republic and the Fribourg Empire, and had only emigrated closer to the galactic core as a teenager.

  Jessica watched as every head at the table slowly turned to face her, including the Chief Engineer. The conference room was pregnant with anticipation. Stories of what she had already done to the few crew members who failed to measure up had gotten around.

  “I’m interested, Vanek,” she drawled, “as to why you plan to remove the bay doors completely and then cover the bay back over.”

  She watched Nina smile at her and nod to her cohort.

  “I’ll let Moirrey explain,” Vanek replied

  “Is quite simple, ma’am,” the pixie began. Moirrey Kermode had a voice like a songbird, a very small one, her tone floating up and down and around as she spoke. “You won’t want anyone in there when we launch birds, anyway. Doing it this way saves you four to six seconds in an emergency. Take the doors off, and cover the whole thing over with a cloth that will hold until we push a missile through it. It won’t show on scanners and the bad guys won’t be able to tell the difference until we fly one. Then it won’t matter. After all, all the world’s a stage.”

  “A stage?” Jessica was at a loss.

  “Aye, ma’am. An’ we are merely players.”

  “That sounds like a quote, Yeoman Kermode,” Jessica observed.

  “Tis,” the tiny woman smiled. “Shakespeare. The Great Bard.”

  “I see,” Jessica leaned back. Around the table, the rest relaxed as well. “Republic? Empire? Concord?”

  “No, ma’am,” Moirrey continued. “Homeworld. He lived befor
e spaceships.”

  “And people still quote him eleven thousand years later?” Jessica asked, startled by the non–sequitur.

  “He were a great playwright,” she smiled. She raised her hands to encompass the entire ship around them in a single motion. “This is just a set. It needs decorating so people will believe what they see, instead of what they know. Ye show them an observation blip, and they’ll belief it until ye shows `em different.”

  Jessica smiled as she listened to the woman nearly drift into a cant so obscure as to be impenetrable. She rose and stretched.

  “Ozolinsh,” she said firmly. “You have my authorization. Let Jež know what you need and give me a rough estimate as to when we can test fire it.”

  She took a step and a paused, before turning back. “Ladies, good job. I’m not sure what reward will be most appropriate, but we’ll talk. I expect that we’ll need this surprise before we’re done.”

  She exited amidst general noise and hubbub.

  Considering where she planned to go, they were most certainly going to need it at some point.

  Chapter XIII

  Date of the Republic October 23, 392 Surat Thani system

  Denis entered the forward gymnasium with trepidation. This was Keller’s normal training period, and he knew she preferred solitude. And it wasn’t like this couldn’t have waited until later.

  But it was also a good time to chat with her, without the confines of an office, or rank. Plus, he had heard about it, but never actually seen a live demonstration.

  This was too good to pass up.

  She was standing in the middle of a cleared area about six meters on a side, wearing a skin–tight body suit that left little of her hard body to the imagination. She was concentrating on the man–shaped training robot in front of her, so he could take the time to appreciate form and movement.

  Denis liked women that were taller and thinner. Perhaps more like Marcelle Travere, the commander’s personal steward. The rest of his commander was equally hard. Feminine, in her own way, but the femininity of the Amazon warrior, and not the fairy princess. Keller had powerful thighs and shoulders, muscular curves that looked like they would turn to fleshiness and eventually fat if she let herself go.

  He couldn’t imagine her letting herself go. Ever.

  She wore a headband today. Normally, her hair was short enough to be out of the way, so it was probably for sweat rather than vision, although it did keep her hair up and back.

  Based on her fighting stance, she was left–handed, but he knew that already. In her left hand, she held a long, straight, single–edged sword, what the combatants called a saber. Instead of something more exotic, it was apparently made of simple steel. Denis wondered what it would be like made from hull metal.

  In her right hand, a much shorter blade, heavier, and with a pronounced cross–guard instead of the basket protecting her left hand. From his research, they called it the main–gauche, literally, the left hand, although it wasn’t.

  She had turned to a spot where she could see him, even as the fighting robot maneuvered with her.

  “Jež,” she called. “Important?”

  “Negative, ma’am,” he called back.

  She nodded and continued to move.

  The robot mirrored her to some extent, with a long and short blade in each human–like hand, although it fought in the more traditional, right–handed, style.

  The machine’s long blade flashed out, and Denis got a chance to watch the Valse d’Glaive.

  Instead of standing still and blocking the blow, as normal fencers would, she dropped to a crouch, with the short blade up to redirect the slash over her head.

  At the same time, she thrust forward belt–high with her own saber and swung her foot at her opponent’s ankle joint.

  Denis decided he would have been simultaneously skewered and tripped on his ass.

  The robot skipped backwards instead, flashing out with its short blade at her arm.

  Rather than try to block, she tumbled across the floor like an acrobat. In the middle of her somersault, Denis heard the loud thump of steel on plastic. The robot stopped suddenly and came to rest.

  “Contact: Keller. Score 10 to 5. Match: Keller,” a woman’s voice announced.

  Denis watched Jessica stand and bow ceremonially to the fighting robot.

  She turned and walked over to a weapons rack set by the door to the shower and began to inspect her blades.

  Denis waited a few moments and then joined her. Only when he got close could he tell how hard she was breathing.

  “Jež,” she glanced up at him.

  “Commander,” he nodded back.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked.

  “We will have gotten the last load of food and supplies within the next twenty minutes and be ready to break orbit. Then we can go do whatever it is we’re going to do.” He fought the urge to come to parade rest. “It would be useful to know what we’re doing.”

  “And I haven’t been particularly forthcoming, have I?” she smiled.

  The blades were put away. She grabbed a handy towel and wiped her face and neck.

  Up close, Denis had an even better view of the petite amazon body, and the smell. How someone that covered in sweat could manage to smell like a clear morning after rain, he wasn’t sure.

  It must have been one of those secrets women only passed down to their daughters.

  It was also rather distracting at a time when he was trying to be friendly instead of proper. Especially since she apparently was wearing just enough of a sports bra under the top to keep her breasts contained. Not that they were large or heavy, but her sweat seemed to outline them well.

  “Command prerogative,” he said, falling back on formal instead of friendly. His eyes wanted to wander.

  Something of his discomfort seemed to show. She flipped the towel down over her shoulders and covered enough of her body to break his distraction. She smiled, probably aware of the effect she was having.

  She was always three steps ahead.

  “And you have anticipated me by about two hours,” she said, facing him squarely, “which is the mark of a good officer. I had planned to let people know after we crossed to Jumpspace, to keep any hint of our mission from outrunning us.”

  “I see, commander,” he replied. “I can wait.”

  “No,” she said sharply. She paused for a moment, apparently looking for the words before she continued.

  “It’s not in my nature to trust, Denis. I’m working on it, but it comes hard to me.” She licked her lips as she concentrated.

  “We’re going to go raid 2218 Svati Prime, on the Imperial side of the Cahllepp Frontier.”

  Denis did some quick math in his head. “That’s nearly three weeks sail from here,” he said with surprise. “Clear across the Kaldwell Gulf.

  “Yes,” she replied with a hard grin. “They’ll never see it coming. That’s why we stopped at Surat Thani to take on as many supplies as we could hold. It’s like a thumb that sticks out into the Gulf itself along here, and makes it a shorter jump. Commercial ships normally run a horseshoe–shaped trade route clear out beyond the borders and back. We’re cutting straight across.”

  She paused, but he had no more questions.

  “So you take us out and get us lined up for the Jump,” she said, “while I get cleaned up and join you on the bridge in about three hours. I’ll let everyone know then.”

  “I see,” he said. Finally, he did, at least a glimmer.

  In addition to trials by fire and combat, they were apparently going to become famous for acts of extreme navigation.

  He looked down at the weapons rack beside her once again.

  As they say, live by the sword…

  Chapter XIV

  Date of the Republic October 25, 392 Jumpspace outbound from Surat Thani system

  Fidgets? Really? Now?

  Jessica sat at her desk, reviewed random notes while she waited. And fidgeted.

&
nbsp; She was generally good at waiting. One former commander had likened her to a moray eel more than once, tucked down into a dark hole and waiting for something interesting to swim overhead.

  Today, she just had the fidgets. It was unlike her, but this was an abnormal day.

  A knock at the hatch broke her out of her reverie.

  “Enter,” she called, pushing a button on her desk to unlock it from the inside.

  Marcelle came through first, carefully, as though scouting her mood. Apparently, the fidgets had been obvious. Or perhaps contagious. They shared a quick, secret smile before Marcelle gestured for her companion to enter.

  Yeoman Kermode, Moirrey, was extremely nervous.

  Perhaps a touch guilty? Called suddenly to the headmaster’s office because somebody blabbed? All hell about to break loose and the past going to suddenly catch up with you?

  Jessica made a mental note not to look too deeply into the woman’s past. Perhaps get her drunk sometime and pick her brain, but that could be later.

  “Sit, please, Moirrey,” Jessica said, pointing at one of the chairs. She looked up with a smile. “Thank you, Marcelle. I promise to be nice to her.”

  Marcelle actually blushed. “Aye, sir,” she said and was gone out the door.

  Jessica took a moment to study the young engineer before she said anything.

  She was tiny.

  Not as ethereal as Nina Vanek, although they were almost of a height. No, it was someone had taken a perfectly–proportioned woman and shrunk her down to a ninety percent copy.

  Right now, Moirrey had the fidgets as well. There must be something in the air today.

  “Relax,” Jessica said suddenly into the silence. “Whatever it is, nobody ratted you out. I want your help on a project.”

  From the way the woman suddenly collapsed back into the chair, Jessica decided whatever it was she was dreading, it must have been good. All the more reason not to dig. And to take her drinking sometime.