Flight of the Blackbird (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 5)

by Blaze Ward

  “Not at all, Joh,” Em said. “But I have a better idea. Let us treat it like a fait accompli with Keller. We can keep the plan for a big reception, but turn it slightly on its head.”

  “How so?”

  “Make it a reception to honor Arlo, instead,” Em continued. “Those hidebound, old warhorses can’t really argue with that, except for the traditional rivalry for the junior service. And that would bring even more of the Army Command onto your side, mostly at the Navy’s expense.”

  “That’s evil, Em,” the Emperor observed with a sly smile. “I like it. Will Keller mind?”

  Emmerich put his elbows back on the desk and let his thoughts wander.

  It was still odd that he was the Empire’s go-to expert on that woman. But then, he had spent the most time around her, even if she had snookered him rather well on more than one occasion.

  That just made him more careful about her in the future.

  He smiled. It would be like all the fencing during Arnulf’s Promenade, once again. But once you stripped away all the innuendo and lies, she was utterly driven by her interpretation of duty.

  That she was coming here, in these circumstances, meant she should probably be safe to count as an ally, even if not a friend.

  After all, the Queen of the Pirates could have easily returned to her throne and worked to raid Fribourg’s supporters and distant outposts, had she really wanted to get around the Peace Aquitaine had signed.

  Or she could have worked to overturn it.

  It helped that they knew when she would arrive, roughly, courtesy of a fast dispatch boat making the kind of run to the capital to challenge Tomas Kigali’s reputation for speed. Keller would be here in another week or so, giving them more than a month to fête and entertain her properly before the wedding.

  “I believe we can rely on Keller wanting to work with us, Joh,” he said finally. “And I can serve in your stead as her host, to let you maintain a polite fiction of official distance.”

  Emmerich smiled just as evilly at his best friend.

  “That means, of course, that we will force you to come to our manor house for dinner, some night, and bring your whole family,” Em continued.

  “I can just imagine the trouble Freya and Kati will get themselves into, planning that,” Joh said with a mock shudder.

  “Oh, no, my dread Emperor,” Em replied. “Imagine Casey, Heike, and Jessica Keller at one table.”

  They shared a laugh, but Em felt a niggle of dread in the pit of his stomach.

  Was he really going to rely on Jessica Keller as an ally against his own enemies in the Empire?

  CHAPTER XVI

  IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 176/09/22. DITTMAR PALACE, WERDER, ST. LEGIER

  It was a simple note, delivered via personal messenger. Sigmund had made sure he was alone in his office before he opened it, several long minutes after the Assistant Deputy Minister for Security for the planet of Osynth B’Udan had departed to wherever men like that went when you didn’t want them in plain sight.

  The message itself could have come via Imperial Post. There was nothing on the linen stock page that incriminated either the sender or the receiver. And the fact that elements inside Imperial Security were working to assist him in his quest to save the Empire meant that it was extra secure. Had they wanted, they already had enough evidence to have him publicly hung.

  Sigmund had worked judiciously at those little details that frequently tripped up others wishing to transcend mere intrigue and commit treason.

  This was a game for the Crown. Failure would end in death.

  But if something wasn’t done right now, the damage to the Fribourg Empire, to the utter foundations of Imperial culture, threatened to wipe out everything they had built.

  Thuringwell was an infection, slowly poisoning the minds of an entire generation. If it wasn’t excised, cut bodily and cauterized, who knew what they might demand?

  Already, a new Charter of Humanity had begun circulating, demanding an end to the right of birth, to be replaced by some insane meritocracy, just waiting to be abused by demagogues out to amass personal power at the expense of civility and tradition.

  Sigmund would not allow it.

  He had seen what Johannes had done in the halls of the Imperial Palace itself. Both princesses educated far beyond need, as if they were men. And the youngest, Kasimira, wrote books and popular music.

  Nothing good would come of it, especially not if their own father fostered such outrages against mores, to say nothing of the son who would inherit the crown in another few decades.

  No, best to act now, before the Crown Prince married and had an heir that would abscond with the public’s love and interest.

  Sigmund could stoke the fires of discontent.

  The Fleet was also deeply concerned. Worried that Peace with Aquitaine would mean reduced budgets, diminished prestige, lost power. And they still bore the scars that Jessica Keller had carved into their hides at 2218 Svati Prime, at Petron, at Ballard.

  Kozlov’s failure at Thuringwell had just rammed home the risk they faced if it festered.

  Something had to be done.

  Every day the Peace continued, the populace became that much more comfortable with it. The M’hanii Frontier was an impossible distance away, and largely unknown. The war with Buran was barely newsworthy, especially as Johannes and his ilk celebrated a Peace.

  Sigmund looked down at the paper again. Elegant calligraphy on a buff page.

  His Excellency, Rodrigo Yamimura, and party will be delighted to join you in celebration of the great wedding. We will arrive at St. Legier on 8 November.

  Nothing more. Nothing more was needed. It was an innocent enough message, if intercepted. The delivery by personal messenger insured that it would arrive in time, so that the final planning could be refined.

  After all, the wedding was scheduled for the 14th. Security would be as tight and alert as humanly possible on that day, with various Fleet elements on high alert, and ground forces prepared for any eventuality.

  Nobody would be expecting a revolution to occur a week earlier.

  CHAPTER XVII

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC SEPTEMBER 24, 398 KALI-MA. JUMPSPACE

  It was that late period of ship’s night when Jessica found herself free to…

  Worry was the wrong term. It was a wasteful act to worry, unless that was the first step to Risk Analysis. Mitigation. Reaction scenarios. Combat planning.

  But those were activities either for the daytime, or, more normally, when she just woke up, having let her unconscious mind grind on a problem all night and solve it for her. The creative element, mixed with all the planning and note-taking, so that she could simply hand her team a set of code words, and let them immediately understand the overall plan, and their place in it.

  Harmony. Symphony.

  Art.

  But tonight, sleep eluded her, lying in the dimness of her small cabin aboard Baxter. This wasn’t planning for an engagement between ships, or even battle squadrons. Nor was it diplomacy, not as Tadej Horvat had taught her to understand the concept.

  No, this was something else.

  She was supposedly an honored guest, of a man she had publically embarrassed and nearly killed on more than one occasion.

  The man who was the other half of their very personal war.

  And she was also the guest of an Emperor that she could be seen as thwarting, even if she was simply the best-known of the millions of her friends and comrades working to save the Republic.

  It just didn’t add up.

  For perhaps the millionth time, Jessica wondered if all of this was some elaborate trap on the part of Wachturm and Karl. Get her there, isolated, and have her disappear.

  They didn’t even have to assassinate her in public.

  Ship still vanished occasionally. Pirates. Navigation errors. Something.

  Random, catastrophic failures that left you stranded in the darkness between stars for years, until the life support syste
ms gave out. After ten millennia of star flight, explorers still found ghost ships, stuffed with frozen bodies long since given over to the eternal sleep.

  What the hell was wrong with her? When did she get so morbid?

  Jessica sat up in bed and let her mind come to full functioning. She still slept in an old chaos green undershirt left over from her days of wearing one constantly. Her legs were bare, but the cabin was warm enough as she climbed down from her rack and paced the seven steps from wall to hatch.

  Would Karl try to kill her? Would the Imperial Fleet try, regardless of whatever orders their Emperor had given?

  Will nobody rid me of this troublesome priest, Henry had asked.

  Back home, the Noble Lords and the Fighting Lords were in a constant rivalry for control of the Fleet that occasionally got serious enough to end careers. Her own success owed a serious debt to the fact that Nils Kasum was one of the best Fighting Lords of the previous generation, and had left his indelible stamp on the organization. If Petia Naoumov succeeded him as First Lord, like most people expected, the worst of the Noble Lords might be washed entirely out finally and the Republic of Aquitaine Navy turned into a fully professional force for the first time in centuries.

  What were the ripples in the calm pond that was the Imperial Fleet? How many of them hid riptides, or sneaker waves?

  Jessica considered getting dressed at this point. Having a go at the fighting robot installed back aboard Kali-ma, just to work out some of the nervous energy. But if she did that, Marcelle and Willow would feel obliged to get up with her, regardless of whatever orders Jessica might think she could give those two women.

  That would quickly turn into a cascade of other folks not getting any sleep, either, at a point where they were only a few days out from St. Legier itself.

  No, this needed to stay in the cabin with her.

  Why would Emmerich Wachturm spend so much time, energy, and personal capital with Karl, just to get her, Moirrey, and Vo alone? Who would resent that presentation? And who would profit from her being there?

  Jessica knew that the real control of the Imperial Fleet resided with a council made up entirely of close, male members of the Imperial Family. Karl VII. The Red Admiral. Up to a dozen cousins of one degree or another, but only by blood. There were no husbands who had married into the Imperial clan in that room when the important decisions were made.

  Plus, Grand Admiral Huff had finally retired, after a career nearly as impressive as that of his much-more-famous nephew, Emmerich Wachturm. What had that done to the balance of power within that inner group? Had he been the crazed warrior, a cousin-in-spirit with Alber’ d’Maine? Was that what had prolonged the war?

  Or had he been the calm, rational one, the diplomat riding herd on the hotheads?

  Nils Kasum’s spies, little gray men and women who seemed to appear from around blind alleys, had only been able to give her so much information. Partly, to protect themselves and their methods if this was all a trap. But also, because there was so much nobody knew.

  Like why the most famous, the most dangerous Admiral in the galaxy would invite his deadliest enemy to the wedding of his own daughter, under a flag of truce and reconciliation?

  Jessica blinked.

  Perhaps she was supposed to be some sort of stalking goat.

  The only answer that made any sense was that she was intended to be someone’s blade. Either the saber, or the main-gauche. The strike, or the block. The obvious move or the subtle surprise.

  Someone was maneuvering, deep in the darkness, to set someone else up for a nasty fall. Jessica Keller being on St. Legier was either the catalyst, or the distraction.

  She nearly growled loud enough that someone else could hear it, and not just herself. Those bastards, those men, were intent on using her. That made sense.

  But they hadn’t taken into account the second oath she had taken, the private one.

  All Command Centurions swear the public oath on taking command of a new vessel. Legalisms cloaked in ritual. But that was just velvet covering the blade.

  By will of the Republic of Aquitaine Navy and First Lord Nils Kasum, the undersigned, Command Centurion Jessica Keller, is hereby ordered to report aboard the RAN Auberon at the earliest opportunity and take command, subject to the normal rules and regulations. She will exercise excellence and demand the same of her crew, that the whole reflect the greatest acclaim in serving the needs of the Republic and the will of the Senate.

  That had been the beginning. The Public Oath. The statement of legalities.

  She will work her ass off to see that the Fribourg Empire falls on her watch, doing every damned thing possible to advance the day when she is sitting in orbit above St. Legier, watching bombs level the last armed resistance that threatens the galaxy. When aristocracy gives way to meritocracy, you blue-blooded bastards.

  The unspoken words. The kind of Vow of Excellence that Alber’ and Tomas Kigali occasionally talked about when Denis and Robbie and the other Command Centurions weren’t around.

  What you do when nobody is looking defines who you are.

  Jessica felt the knot between her shoulder blades suddenly loosen. She hadn’t even realized it was there until it vanished.

  She was a Queen. She was a diplomat. She was a Fleet Centurion, which was just a different kind of Command Centurion.

  But more importantly, she was a warrior.

  If Karl and Emmerich wanted a war, she would happily give them one.

  ST. LEGIER

  CHAPTER XVIII

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC SEPTEMBER 28, 398 KALI-MA. EDGE OF THE ST. LEGIER SYSTEM

  Jessica’s instructions had been precisely specific, so her orders to Wiley were as well.

  Kali-ma had emerged clear at the outer edge of the navigation field for the St. Legier system and waited for the local Fleet units to challenge and identify her.

  After all, they were invited guests, but Jessica had arrived in a warship. One dramatically out-gunned by the tonnage of vessels plying nearby space right now, but more than an individual match for most of them, even if she doubted they realized that.

  Jessica sat in her usual observer spot, port rear on Kali-ma’s bridge, and watched the team of Wiley and Yan work. In many ways, it felt like a mirror of her and Denis, but that may have been Shiori studying Jessica’s techniques and consciously emulating them.

  It worked.

  “Contact,” a man’s voice called from another corner.

  Jessica turned to watch the Comm Officer at work. Like on an Aquitaine vessel, he was in charge of communications and sensors, although this ship did not carry a dedicated Science Officer, regardless of his title.

  Yet.

  Still, Anders Himura could have gotten that job on any Aquitaine vessel with a little retraining in terminology.

  He was a light-skinned man, almost pale, as many in Corynthe were. Many shades lighter than Jessica, both in skin and in his reddish-gold hair. Right now, he was intent on three different boards at one, distilling everything quickly.

  “Imperial challenge and formal welcome, Commanders,” he said, turning enough to look back at both her and Wiley before returning to his readouts. Not quite up to Auberon’s standards, but not that far off from her own exceptional crew. “They have also attached local navigation instructions and a flight path that will get us down to the edge of the gravity well to take up a safe orbit with all the other traffic.”

  Sharp. Professional.

  If remaking Corynthe was to be her legacy, that would be an acceptable outcome. This crew didn’t sound at all like the pirates she had inherited at the point of a sword, four years ago.

  Wiley glanced back with a questioning look. Jessica nodded in reply.

  “Comm,” she said. “Acknowledge everything and send our own greetings. Nav, plot and execute, but make us and Marco Polo look like boring, old freighters going in, and not raiders, please.”

  A chorus of laughing assents answered.

  Now, it was
time to fly into the Gates of Hell.

  CHAPTER XIX

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC SEPTEMBER 30, 398 KALI-MA. ABOVE ST. LEGIER

  St. Legier.

  Jewel of the entire Fribourg Empire. Strung out below Jessica as Kali-ma coasted along in the shadow of the monstrous orbital fortress that was Imperial Grand Fleet Operations.

  A green and blue marble below, hanging on the firmament of night, bright and glowing with promise as they flew in geo-synchronous orbit over Werder’s mid-morning sky.

  Jessica couldn’t remember all the times she had dreamed about floating above this planet. First, as part of a conquering fleet.

  Later, leading one.

  Watching fires burn as the planet fought to the last and was bombed into utter submission; the final, desperate holdouts as the Empire was ended and her people set free.

  She wondered now if that made her a Visigoth, at least in comparison. St. Legier was an old world, re-colonized after the revival, but still occasionally throwing up lost reminders that man had first walked its surface eight thousand years ago.

  But today, she was here as an honored guest.

  Even now, an Ambassadorial Shuttle was approaching the forward airlock, just below the bridge on the port side of the ventral blade.

  Jessica stood at parade rest in her charcoal-gray and maroon formal outfit, the one she thought of as Admiral of the Corynthe Fleet, or Queen of the Pirates, even though she had any number of costumes and uniforms she could wear back home on Petron.

  Desianna wore her best First Minister outfit today. Formal, verging on severe. Black silk, laced and embroidered with violet. A full robe, with Jessica’s personal signet, Kali-ma with her four arms, done as a panel across the chest in the ancient Chinese style. She barely looked like a woman in it, until you saw her face, still amazingly lovely, or the long hair, dyed raven black and tinted in plum highlights that accentuated the large mesh of silver rings that contained it.