by Blaze Ward
A chorus of assents and hoots sounded back at him as his Flight began to close.
“Bombardment wing,” he continued, singling out the two S–11’s and the gunship. “Starfall, Damocles, Necromancer, prepare for your strafing run on the enemy station. Remember, badly damaged, but not destroyed. Hold fire if you have any doubts.”
A bright light appeared over the planet, lighting up the horizon. On his scanner, the side of the Imperial base turned to hash as an explosion blew materials and substance into space.
“All teams, cancel previous orders,” he said with a savage joy. “Bombardment wing, the enemy station is down. Repeat, enemy station is down. Go straight at the fighters and get them to run if you can. Fighter Wings, swoop in on them from both sides. Let’s dance, people.”
“Prisoners?” Uller called back.
“Negative, Uller,” Jouster responded. “Boss wants the fear of the Creator today and clear skies for Phase 2. Only survivors are those that go straight down right now and get planetside ahead of us. Let them go. Everyone else gets splattered unless they can outrun us.”
Jouster looked down at the scanner once, adjusted himself in his seat slightly, and watched a missile track outbound from their formation like a lightning bolt.
This wasn’t going to take long.
Ξ
Jessica listened to her crew cheer as high–powered optics picked up the Imperial station hit with a flash of light and escaping air.
“Afolayan,” she said as the noise died down, “was that one of ours?”
“Affirmative, sir,” the dark man replied, turning to smile at her across the space. “The stealth bird got right on top of them before they saw it. Barn owl got her mouse.”
“Good shooting,” she smiled.
Around her, the bridge crew was all smiles and cheers. It had been a long time since Auberon had been able to take it to the Fribourg Empire with this much emphasis.
The logs had shown a few encounters with pirates that ran at the first sign of the Republic, plus a few deep space rescues of disabled freighters. Nothing nearly this exciting in years.
In a lower orbit, the two groups of fighters began an elaborate ballet, but one that was a foregone conclusion. A handful of missiles leapt out from her Wing and shattered the enemy’s already–weak formation like a glass pitcher of water dropped off of a counter. Jouster’s pilots swooped in on the suddenly–fleeing Imperial craft like sharks chasing tuna.
“Okay, people,” she called across the bridge, “time for us to get to work.”
She waited a moment for things to quiet down.
“Navigation,” she continued, all business. “Bring us into a polar orbit, low enough to avoid moons, high enough to miss satellites. Scanners, who do we have in the neighborhood? Tactical, begin plotting everything within five light seconds and developing firing solutions. Flight Deck, looks like a few of your birds have damage, but everyone is coming home safe. Prepare for retrieval and lockdown.”
Heads went down to boards and fingers danced across controls. The noise dropped down to a low murmur of questions into comm devices and the background noise of the air systems, fighting a losing battle with the rank musk of adrenalin.
The smell of fresh coffee perked up her nose.
Marcelle stood beside Jessica’s station with a mug, lid opened to let the brew breathe.
She grabbed it with a smile and took a sip. “You really do spoil me, Marcelle.”
The tall woman smiled back and nodded, silently withdrawing and exiting the bridge.
Jessica sipped and watched her crew work.
A light came up on her board from the Science/Scanning Officer, sitting well forward in a quiet corner.
“Commander,” Centurion Giroux said, his normally quiet voice alive today with energy, “there is a freighter making a run for Jumpspace that you might find interesting. Her manifest shows the vessel is loaded to the gills with metal bar stock. Mostly steel, but also a variety of fairly rare industrial alloys. Pretty valuable cargo.”
“We’re not pirates, Giroux,” Jessica called across the bridge. She watched his head come up and turn to look at her across the suddenly–silent space between them.
“Aye, sir,” he called back with a smile, “but if we’re going to be out in deep space, well behind enemy lines for a while, we’re going to use up a lot of materials doing maintenance. This and the occasional grain transport would let us run wild over here until we ran out of munitions. Plus, we get to kick an Imperial insurance company in the shins.”
Jessica smiled. This crew was developing a great potential for mischief.
Speaking of…
Jessica clicked on the comm. “Engineering, this is the bridge. What is the status of the bomb?”
Even she couldn’t call it anything else these days.
“Ten degrees below freezing, sir,” Moirrey’s burr came back almost immediately. “Background radiation detectable, but not dangerous, unless you slept in the freezer with it for a month. She’s ready to go, any time you want her.”
Jessica looked up and realized that every single face on the bridge was turned, watching her with anticipation, except the marine guard in the corner whose job was professional paranoia. Or utter lack of imagination. Maybe both. Marines were like that.
She scanned back and forth. A few of her people looked down or blushed in embarrassment, but the rest just waited.
Jessica took a deep breath. Her nostrils flared. She smiled a hard, predatory grin back at them.
Up until this moment, this had just been a flamboyant raid, deep into enemy territory. Annoying, but merely a footnote in the overall history of a war that had been going on, spasmodically, for over a century. What she was about to do would guarantee her her own chapter.
Or a hangman’s noose. Maybe both.
“Roger that, Moirrey,” she said. “Transport the weapon to the forward missile bay and arm her for deployment.”
Jessica turned, found the Gunner, Centurion Afolayan staring intently at her. “Secondaries only, Afolayan,” she said firmly. “Fire a shot across that freighter’s bow. Miss by a reasonable distance. Convince them to heave to. Break. Comm, you also convince them to heave to for boarding. Remind them we’re the Republic, not pirates, so they will be well treated.”
Jessica looked at the big board, ships and moons and flight arcs moving in three dimensions. The big white one, Auberon, slowly maneuvered into position over the Ao–Shun gravity well, stable in a modified Lagrange point. They had plenty of time, unless someone showed up suddenly.
She would deal with that as she had to.
“Gaucho, this is the bridge,” she called down to the flight deck. “Round up your boarding company of marines and rendezvous Cayenne with Necromancer to capture a civilian freighter. Science Officer has the specs. Out.”
A green light came on as the Assault Shuttle began to pre–flight for launch. He had apparently been sand–bagging down there. Probably already had a company of assault marines aboard.
That man was insane. Useful, but crazy as a junebug.
Jessica leaned back and enjoyed her coffee.
They were going to say the same thing about her shortly.
Chapter XIX
Date of the Republic November 14, 392 Polar Lagrange Point over 2218 Svati Prime
“Commander,” the voice called out, “Auberon is in position over the pole.”
Jessica hadn’t been day–dreaming, just sitting back and letting her staff do their jobs. Now it was time for her to do hers.
“Defense Centurion Vanek,” she said, voice shifting to a formal mode. This was, after all, going to end up before a Fleet Advocate at some point. Maybe it would be a formality.
Maybe not.
Nina turned and looked at her with a serious face. There had been an entire class at the Academy on Stellar Law that dealt with situations exactly like this. Every one of them had passed it to make it this far in their careers.
Jessica wanted
to make sure that nobody else hung with her, if that was what would happen.
“Sir?” Nina said.
“Vanek, you have a firing solution for the experimental weapon. You will fire it into the planet’s atmosphere.”
“Commander, I refuse to carry out that order,” Nina said, speaking as much for the gallery and the history books as for her friends and crewmates. “You are bombing unarmed civilians without provocation.”
Jessica nodded. Just like the legal books prescribed. She had a really sharp crew. She was proud of these people, just with what they had accomplished so far.
“Protest acknowledged, Vanek,” Jessica continued, “and overridden. You will fire the weapon under my authority and my responsibility.”
“Acknowledged, Commander,” Vanek said.
Jessica, and the entire bridge crew, watched Nina pushed the button on her board.
Below, Auberon suffered a minor earthquake as the missile rack ejected the weapon and sent it on a terminal glide path, a comet lighting up the polar night.
“Missile away, commander,” Nina said with authority.
Jessica nodded.
Everything by the book.
Jessica waited a ten count of utter silence before she engaged the comm.
“Engineering, this is the bridge, you are ship–wide,” she said. “Moirrey, please provide a color commentary for the crew as the bomb makes her descent.”
“Aye, ma’am,” the voice responded. The excitement made her accent nearly impenetrable, not that anybody would mind. Most of them knew quite a bit about the bomb nicknamed Mischief.
“So, boys and girls,” Yeoman Kermode continued with a laugh, “these big scary Republic pirates are just sitting up there. They’ve done blown everything to shits and now whats are they goin’ ta do? ‘ere now, what’s that? A missile of some sort. Dun’t recognize it. Some new experimental model? An’ what’re they going to hit clear up at the north pole?
Jessica nodded and sipped her coffee. Moirrey really should have been on the stage. She had the patter and flow of a stand–up comedian. Theater was in her blood. The crew was hanging on her every word.
“Hallo? What’s this? The missile is transmitting all sorts of information in the clear? That’s not right. Someone up there must be daft, er a screw–up somethin’ fierce. We can see everything is doing. And why the hell is a missile below freezing, anyways? What’s up with that radiation count? Is not a nuclear weapon. Even shielded, they’s hotter’n’that. Can’t nobody do nothing to shoot that damned thing down?”
The whole bridge crew was suffering the giggles at this point. It was like a radio drama playing out as Moirrey changed voices and tones.
“This is not good, people. Friction’s causing the ice around whatever that warhead is to start melting. Pressure is starting to go through the roof. Wow. Ice turned to water that fast. Who builts a silly ting like that? Oh, my. Now she’s all steam, sealed up tight like a kettle fer tea. The outside, she’s red hot noaw. Danger, danger, danger. Hides the women an children. Is a bomb. OH MY GOD, SHE’S GONNA BLOW!!!!”
Silence.
Jessica had to suppress her giggles. Moirrey understood audience psychology at least as well as she did engineering. Probably better. Her voice faded to just above a whisper.
“That’s it? Just goes boom clear up in the stratosphere? What kind o’silly bomb does that? Oh, hey, the winds are picking up the mist and radioactive materials from the bomb and scattering them to the four corners of the world. You don’t suppose they did that on purpose, do you? What the hell was that bomb carrying? Oh shit, somebody call the Imperial College of Medicine and gets them here quick–like to detect all this shits before people starts dying? Oh my gods, I feel a fever coming on. SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!!!!”
Jessica simply could not imagine having an entire ship as silent as mice. And yet, here she was. It was truly a tour de force. Maybe she should let Moirrey recruit a small theater company and do radio dramas like this more often.
“We now return you to your regular programming, children. Have a good night.” Moirrey’s voice was back to normal.
The entire crew erupted in cheers, everyone in earshot on the bridge plus everyone close enough to Moirrey down in Engineering. Jessica imagined it was probably everyone with a comm on, anywhere on the ship.
“Auberon, this is Command Centurion Keller,” Jessica fought to keep her voice level and professional. She felt like she had just committed graffiti all over Ao–Shun with a can of neon–pink spray paint. That was pretty close to the truth. “Flag Centurion, have the squadron rendezvous with the captured freighter at point Theta and prepare for Jumpspace. Ao–Shun has been successfully raided. Good job, people. Wait until they see what we do next.”
Jessica leaned back and glowed. Seriously, there was no better feeling in the world. None.
Chapter XX
Date of the Republic November 16, 392 Jumpspace outbound from 2218 Svati Prime
Fresh, steaming–hot tea was a wonderful thing.
Denis sat in the officer’s wardroom and thought deep philosophical thoughts into his tea. Across the table, he watched Keller devour some sort of stew the cooks had worked up for her.
The menu had changed along with the change in command. Kwok had always paid to have his own personal chef cook meals for him alone, or occasionally a few honored guests and lackeys. The crew ate basic naval rations, unless they paid for something better.
The recipes now were simpler fare, often a meat dish in stew or soup, or occasionally rice. But much better quality.
It was just one of the things that had changed for the better.
“Jež, you awake?”
Denis blinked. “Hmm?”
“I asked if you had enjoyed the ride down on the Flag Bridge,” Jessica apparently repeated.
Where had his mind been? Oh, right. Food.
“Well, enough, sir,” he replied neutrally. He kept forgetting that she paid attention to absolutely everything around her. Another improvement over the previous regime. Probably.
Keller stopped eating long enough to spear him with a hard look.
He shrugged, unwilling to commit further at this point without more of a clue as to what she was about. Not a woman to play poker with. But he knew that already.
“Good,” she said after a beat, “because I plan to spend my time down there on the next few raids. I just needed to see how this crew responded to stress. And to solutions that didn’t come straight out of the standard tactical manual.”
“Really?” Denis asked, forgetting all decorum for a moment in his surprise. Kwok had never been content being out of shouting range of everyone on the bridge. “Sir.”
She smiled and went back to her food, shoveling in a couple of quick bites.
“And I plan to take Enej Zivkovic down there with me and make him the permanent Flag Centurion,” she said after a swallow. “Strnad and he both passed with flying colors when I threw them into the deep end of the pool, so Zivkovic will handle Flag Communications and she can go back to being Tactical Officer. Afolayan will probably need some advanced training to knock off the sharp edges from the Academy, and I think Tamara would be fantastic at that job. You’ve trained her well.”
Denis felt a blush creep up his neck. Yet another difference with Kwok. Was the rest of his career going to be making comparisons between good officers and Kwok and his predecessors? That would be a nice trade.
“Thank you, sir,” Denis finally managed to get out.
He thought for a moment as she went back to her food.
“I’m surprised at Brewster’s change of heart,” he said, dangling a bit of bait out there to see what response he would get. Maybe she was feeling benevolent.
All he got back was a raised eyebrow. And maybe she wasn’t.
“He made his choice,” she said simply.
Her tone didn’t sound like he was dancing on thin ice with his question. He still didn’t know her well enough to know the danger s
igns conversationally.
Denis did know there were things not written in Brewster’s personnel file. He had checked.
“Apparently so, sir,” Denis replied. “He has so far completed just over one third of the re–qualifications necessary to sit bridge–duty again as a gunner. There have also been a significant drop–off in rumors and whispered complaints about his behavior.”
A pause. A breath. Nothing.
“What did you threaten him with?” Denis whispered. “Nobody has ever been able to get him to behave.”
Keller stopped chewing and put her bowl down silently on the table. Denis sat perfectly still as she sized him up. And apparently decided he passed.
She leaned forward conspiratorially and smiled. “I threatened to make him a fleet–wide laughingstock, Jež. You don’t deal with bullies by challenging them. They thrive on that.”
“Oh?” Denis inquired.
“No, you laugh at them, and get everyone else to laugh at them. Nothing deflates a bully faster than being laughed at by everyone. Especially a woman.”
“I see,” he said.
This woman just kept getting more interesting.
And more dangerous.
Chapter XXI
Imperial Founding: 170/11/26. Xi–Shi
Emmerich sat alone in his office, reading a letter from his youngest daughter, Heike, and sipping an early evening glass of port from his family estates. She was a lovely girl, the apple of his eye, and the child most like him.
Already she was near the top of her class at University. Had she been born a boy, she would have made a fantastic Fleet officer.
A knock at the door a moment before it opened. Captain Baumgärtner shadowed the threshold, holding a handful of printouts in one hand.
“I have anticipated your order, Admiral,” he said as the door closed, “and brought the task force to alert.”
“How bad is it, Hendrik?” Emmerich said as he sat down the letter and took the bundle from the man’s outstretched hand. He nearly dropped his wine as he read the report.
