Auberon (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 1)

by Blaze Ward

  Nils watched Tadej surge out of the sofa angrily. It was like watching a tidal wave suddenly appear on the horizon. He expected the effect would be similar.

  The Premier took a moment to very carefully set down his empty mug and the folder before he stomped to the door. Nils smiled as the man took a deep breath and turned on the charm.

  Only, it wasn’t charm. Planet–crushing anger, perhaps. Lava was certainly involved.

  Tadej pulled the door open and confronted a middle–aged man in the formal uniform of the Senate’s Gendarme.

  “What the hell are you doing here, Milon?”

  The anger radiated off of Tadej like heat waves. It was actually a rather fun to watch, since the Premier rarely got the opportunity to use it on people. Nils found it far more entertaining to watch him do it to someone else.

  It had the desired effect. From where he sat, Nils could just see the man’s face pale and blanch with surprise. He even took a half–step back.

  “I was sent by the Chairman, Premier,” he stammered nervously. “The First Lord had not been dismissed as a witness and the committee demanded he attend them.”

  “You work for me, Mister Postovich,” Tadej’s voice got eerily quiet. “I suggest you return to your office right now and spend some time remembering that. It is a situation I can easily rectify, if provoked. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Senator,” the man said, falling over himself in his haste to escape the outer office and colliding with a pair of Senatorial Guards behind him.

  The group fled noisily up the hall.

  Nils rose as the noise faded. He joined Tadej at the door with a silent look of inquiry.

  “Yes, I suppose,” Tadej replied. He turned to Kamil. “Thank you for the coffee and the competence. You do a credit to your boss, Kamil, unlike some of my people.”

  He turned to Nils and sighed. “Let’s go put out a fire before it gets further out of hand, Nils.”

  Nils nodded and trailed into the man’s wake.

  The afternoon was going to be interesting, it seemed.

  Chapter XXX

  Date of the Republic March 10, 393 Outbound from Qui–Ping system

  Another tactical simulation.

  Jessica sat at her desk and went through it, thinking how she would have reinforced 2218 Svati Prime and, in turn, how to assault that.

  Some people knitted. Others read books. This was how she filled her spare time.

  It was a seductive game to play, trying to out–think total strangers. Even more so an acknowledged genius of an Imperial Admiral named Emmerich Wachturm. The man so good that the Republic Academy taught him and his tactics.

  There was nobody else that had been born in the last century, Republic of Aquitaine or Fribourg Empire, accorded that honor. Nobody else deserved it.

  A knock at the door distracted her. She paused the simulation, then went ahead and shut it down. Her coffee was empty, anyway, so now was a good time to get up and stretch her legs. Maybe another mid–week session with the combat robot.

  Valse d’Glaive required subtlety and suppleness in equal measure. It helped to keep her mind from falling into ruts as well, as the robot was programmed to pick up bad habits and exploit them. Often painfully.

  “Come,” she said, rubbing her eyes.

  “You have a visitor, sir,” Marcelle said with an odd, subdued tone to her voice. It was enough to bring Jessica’s head up. Marcelle never let emotion get involved in her job. Today she sounded troubled. Marcelle?

  “Send them in, Marcelle, and then some fresh coffee, please.”

  “Right away, sir,” the Yeoman said as she stepped back.

  Senior Flight Centurion Milos Pavlovic, Jouster, stood in the doorway, an extremely anxious and ashen look on his face.

  Oh, what the hell?

  “Come in, Jouster. Sit. What can I do for you?”

  She watched him move carefully, precisely, like he was at pains to do everything right. His field uniform even looked cleaned. What was he up to now?

  “Sir,” he said quietly as he sat, “I’ve come to apologize.”

  Jessica leaned back with an apprising look on her face. Not quite the last thing she expected to hear today, or from him, but very, very close.

  “Really? Do tell.” She couldn’t keep the tartness out of her voice even if she wanted to, so she didn’t try.

  To his credit, he flinched at the tone and subsided instead of lashing out.

  He took a deep breath, obviously working from a rehearsed speech about how he had learned from his mistakes and would be a better pilot and leader in the future.

  She almost threw him out of her office right then, just on general principle, but something about his body language stayed his execution.

  “Up until yesterday,” he said, quietly, diffidently. It was so far out of character that she had to lean forward to hear him. “I thought I was a better tactical officer, a better battle manager, than you.”

  He paused and took another breath.

  Jessica wiped all trace of emotion from her face and paid close attention.

  “You called me a lazy amateur going through the motions, suggesting that you would have handled it entirely differently and your method would have succeeded completely, where I got deeper and deeper into trouble.”

  “I did,” she said, just as quietly. She would have lost money betting with any number of people that she would never have heard even this much contrition out of Jouster. “Am I wrong?”

  “No, damn it,” he growled, more at himself than at her. “And that just makes it worse. I was flying on autopilot, doing exactly what the book says not to do, trusting that I was so much better than the other guy that I could get away with it. I got in over my head and had to be rescued.”

  He paused again. Took another labored breath.

  “And I got one of my own killed. Gustav Papp wasn’t my best pilot, or my best friend, or even my favorite wingmate, but he died saving my butt from my own stupidity. I killed Ironside.”

  “That you did, Jouster,” Jessica said quietly into the gap. “Do you understand now why I don’t trust you?”

  He gave her a pained look, like this was the first time he had ever looked into his own soul. Knowing him, it might have been.

  She let him stew.

  “So then I talked to the First Officer, looking for sympathy,” the man continued. “He told me to grow up.”

  “I see,” Jessica said, mentally adding a gold star next to Jež’s name. Her First Officer was turning into a proper commander. That alone would make everything else almost a bonus to her task.

  “So I went down to the tactical simulator bay, all set to prove you wrong, Commander. To show that there was no better way to handle the situation.”

  Jessica noted that the pilot had developed a pitch of fire to his voice. It was like watching the stages of death play out before her eyes.

  “I spent the next twelve hours studying you, looking for that signature move that you think would have worked at C’Xindo. I studied Iger, St. Germaine, Hulun Buir, and Bratsk.”

  “Interesting,” she said. This conversation was already well beyond what she expected. “What did you find, Jouster?”

  “You don’t have a signature move,” he said, almost angry at her, or, more likely, himself. “Every battle you won by using an entirely different maneuver, or trick, or sailing plan. There was no pattern to it.”

  “There’s not supposed to be,” she admitted. “Predictability equals death.”

  “I realize that,” he cried, voice moving up half an octave, “but I had to find something, anything to prove you wrong. And it wasn’t there.”

  He gasped and took a heavy breath, obviously working to calm himself.

  Jessica was impressed. This was a side even his personnel files hadn’t hinted at.

  “So then I thought about you as a person,” he continued.

  Jessica had to fight a grin off of her face.

  That might be the first time h
e had ever thought of her as a person rather than a commander, or a taskmaster, or a piece of ass he might chase.

  She kept her face serious. He probably deserved better than her thoughts about him at this moment.

  “What struck me as utterly unique about you was Valse d’Glaive. The Dance of Swords. So I spent four hours studying the art form, watching video. It is an unlikely combination of two ancient fighting forms from the Homeworld, from cultures a hemisphere apart. Tai Chi, which people still practice today, and Florentine–style fencing, from a city in a nation–state on a planet that was destroyed three thousand years ago.”

  “The Dance Of Swords?” she asked, intrigued by his line of thinking. He might be on to something that someone else could exploit.

  “Aye, Valse d’Glaive,” he replied. “A blade in each hand, able to attack or defend equally well and from either direction. But coupled with movement. Acrobatics, tumbles, leaps. Misdirection. So I went back to each of those battles, and I saw what you did.”

  “What did I do, Jouster?” she said quietly, intrigued for the first time.

  “You let them commit, Commander. Forced them to commit, in fact, either to the obvious blow or the misdirection. It didn’t matter to you which way they committed. Once they did, the other hand struck. Every time. Every single time.”

  Jessica felt a moment of déjà vu overwhelm her. She flashed back sixteen years to Nils Kasum saying almost the exact same words to her while grading her final in Advanced Tactics.

  She leaned forward and studied the man in front of her, chin resting on a fist as her eyes bored in. Interesting. So I might have to do something predictable soon, just to keep being unpredictable?

  “So how would you win at C’Xindo, Jouster?” She couldn’t help sounding like Nils Kasum right now. It was like he was standing in the corner, watching. Hopefully applauding.

  “Pick a pole,” he said. “Probably the southern one since the squadron was planning to climb out of the ecliptic after their strafing pass.”

  “Go on,” she smiled at him, much warmer than she would have thirty seconds ago.

  “The BattleTug Captain has already committed to racing around the planet to try and get a shot at Rajput or Auberon as they go by. It won’t be much of a shot, because we caught them so far out of position, but they’re really, really trying. If I had gone under the pole, we might have been able to get underneath of him before he even noticed we were there. Tactical simulator suggests a worst case we could only have two missiles home as we blew by him at full speed. Best case, five of six. The difference is a month in drydock versus possibly enough damage to have killed her right there in orbit.”

  He paused and took a deep breath. He held it so long she thought he was done and was about to reply.

  “Instead,” the man continued, “I took the obvious path, a pursuit course right into orbit with him where the defense fighters could catch us. We did barely any damage at all, and I killed Flight Centurion Papp. You saw it intuitively and wouldn’t have made that mistake.”

  All the air trailed out him like a balloon. He even seemed to sag in on himself.

  Jessica was completely amazed. Utterly blown away. She had been expecting to transfer his sullen ass on to some next Commander to deal with.

  “Two things, Senior Flight Centurion Pavlovic,” she said calmly, firmly, trying to break through to him before the man simply gave up. “First, people die in war. Yours is the single most dangerous Occupation Specialty in the RAN. Ironside and little miss Bitter Kitten took on five enemy fighters, got three of them, and almost got away, but for a defense missile launched by the BattleTug as they flew by. He was, in fact, protecting her rear as she got all three kills.”

  “She did that?”

  The incredulity in his voice was a wonder, but she needed to break through to him now, before she lost him completely.

  “She did. Now, second point,” she pressed home. “I saw the same maneuver you did, because I plotted out every possible scenario I could think of in the eighteen minutes while we jumped deeper in system. There was nothing intuitive about it.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No, mister,” she felt her own anger begin to boil, building on the energy that seemed to have flowed out of him. “At Iger? I’ll let you in on a secret that only the First Lord knows. I had seventeen contingency maneuvers planned. St. Germaine? Six. Hulun Buir? Eleven. I could go on. The point is that I spend a great deal of time in the Tactical Simulators, plotting possible scenarios and how I would respond. Then I game them out to an end point, rewind to an interesting spot, and try a different outcome.”

  “Really?” he said, quiet again.

  “I suggest, Jouster,” she replied, “that you spend less time working on your gun skills and more on your command skills. Learn to think like the enemy and out–guess them. That will keep you alive.”

  “Yeah,” he said glumly.

  There was a long pause. She let him think.

  “So I came here to apologize to you, Commander,” he said finally. “I was angry, then embarrassed, and then confused. I let you down. I let my people down. I’m sorry.”

  For a long moment, Jessica was sure she could see his soul. He was that open. It was almost scary to be able to look so deep into someone. She couldn’t imagine ever baring her soul, or her neck, so much, for anyone.

  “Apology accepted, Senior Flight Centurion Milos Pavlovic,” she whispered. The moment needed quiet. “Are you ready to fly again?”

  “Sir?”

  “I have one more test for you, Jouster,” she said. “I was going to have Uller do it, but I’m willing to torture you with it instead.”

  “Aye, sir. Do your worst.”

  “You’ll be tasked with flying close escort on Auberon. We’ll have both of your launch rails loaded with Shot missiles. Useful for attacking other fighters and killing inbound missiles, but not much more than that.”

  She gestured to the ship around them. “I plan to fly this great gray beast right down their throats. They will ignore everyone else, Rajput, CR–264, the Flight Wing, so they can concentrate on Auberon. We will just be too big a target to pass up.”

  “They’ll commit to you, and leave themselves wide open.”

  She could hear the wonderment in his voice as the image clicked in his mind.

  “Correct,” she said. “This time, Necromancer will be the live blade.”

  Chapter XXXI

  Date of the Republic April 8, 393 Ladaux

  This was another committee hearing room, although smaller than the grand public one.

  Nils had his scowl firmly pasted to his face by the time he followed the Premier into the chamber.

  He looked forward to what was about to happen, but shouldn’t look too gleeful. Much.

  Tadej appeared angry enough to chew nails.

  The Premier waited for the hubbub at their entrance to settle.

  All sound died, even breathing. Eyes dropped as the Premier’s gaze settled on faces.

  “Those of you who were involved, and I will know all of those names by the end of the day, will stay,” Tadej announced in a voice sharp enough to shave on. “Everyone else will depart immediately. This will be a private meeting.”

  A moment of confused silence passed.

  “Move!” The Premier’s voice, the former First Fleet Lord’s voice, rattle the chandelier overhead.

  A handful of Senators rose with the general mob of staff and happily made their way to the door, obviously relieved to have escaped with their careers, if not their dignity, somewhat intact.

  The man who had been squatting behind the Chairman rose to leave as well, but was stopped by Tadej before he took a whole step. “Brant,” Tadej thundered before dropping down to a normal speaking voice, “you will stay. You may, in fact, have a seat next to the Chairman. You will be sharing his fate.”

  Nils was impressed. The Chairman’s aide shrugged, nodded politely, and settled quickly into a chair without a glance back a
t his boss.

  In less than a minute, the room was down to six of the seventeen Senators, plus a handful of others, Senatorial staff who had decided that their fingerprints would be too obvious to scrub off.

  The Premier walked to one end of the long table, forcing all heads to follow him. He put a hand down on the table as he leaned forward.

  Nils was taken with the image of a headmaster about to lecture a mob of unruly middle school students. Probably not the most inaccurate description, all things considered.

  Tadej let the moment hang far longer than the situation called for. From his face, he was not having a problem with the right word. Perhaps the right profanity to sum it all up in one word, if one existed, but that was something else.

  “There exists,” he said finally, conversationally, “a report, detailing an attack on the Imperial planet of Ao–Shun, in the system 2218 Svati Prime, am I correct?”

  Heads nodded enthusiastically.

  Tadej nodded back at them once.

  “And the report suggests that Command Centurion Jessica Keller aboard the vessel RAN Auberon attacked the planet with bio–weapons and radioactive isotopes, yes?”

  More nods. Nils stood perfectly still by the front door and watched the Premier work. It was art.

  This was why he let his brother handle the political side of things. The Aquitaine Navy was so much more pure and clean. Generally.

  “She did not.”

  The Premier let the stunned silence stretch.

  “I have only just now read the executive summary of her own report, on my way down here to prevent you from committing further treason to the Republic,” Tadej stressed the word Republic, but Nils could tell the operative word that got everyone’s attention was still Treason.

  Senators could be executed for treason. Four had been, although none in a century.

  “So could someone point to the section of the report detailing Command Centurion Keller’s Crimes Against Humanity and General Crimes under the Republic Code?” It sounded like such a polite request. Like asking someone where they wanted to have lunch.