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

by Blaze Ward

  The glass served as a useful prop. Never full, never empty. It let him circulate without one of the valets coming close and risking spilling wine on him from a tray attempting to refill it.

  Plus, he was not drinking anything. A clear head was needed today.

  This was his first chance to observe the Keller woman up close. Wachturm’s notes from four years ago were worthless, and the man himself had long passed his time of usefulness as a spy.

  No, best to send Wachturm to the M’hanii Frontier, as Johannes planned. It would keep his cousin well away from the centers of power and intrigue. The Red Admiral was loyal to the crown, Sigmund hoped, and not to the man currently holding it.

  It would be a shame to have Emmerich Wachturm executed in the wake of the coup.

  He found Keller enjoying a mild bubble of space near one corner of the room. She was not holding court, as a well-known literary star was doing elsewhere, but was just separated from everyone else, in a cluster of women that were alien to most of the men in the room. Men who lacked the context to deal with a woman like that.

  It let him stand off and observe, with others doing the same, as the crowd slowly eddied, like a school of fish.

  She was smaller than her legends.

  Sigmund had known that, but at the same time, it was difficult to reconcile the woman he saw now with the tremendous stories that had grown up around her.

  Slightly below average for a woman. As much as a head shorter than many Imperial women. Long brown hair streaking into grays. Broad in the hips and shoulders, with that build that would turn to flab at the first opportunity, if not kept ruthlessly at bay.

  He preferred his women tall and willowy.

  Motionless when she talked. Keller did not rock back and forth, nor gesture much with her hands. Instead, she stood square with an Imperial Captain that Sigmund didn’t know on sight, and apparently chatted amiably, if serious by tone and expression.

  Sigmund took a moment to study Keller’s associates, the true measure of a person.

  Two obvious bodyguards, both women, as one would expect from the lesser gender, both taller.

  A Minister from Keller’s barbaric holding on the distant fringes of the galaxy. Yet another foolish woman with aspirations to power, however beautiful she might be in the flesh.

  At least Sigmund’s own wife, Karya, had long since learned to be a proper Imperial hostess and mother. Seen, but rarely heard. Happiest at home, and not intriguing with other wives. Leave that to his various mistresses.

  The last one in the group, if Sigmund was forced to admit it, was probably the reason behind his determination to change the course of the Empire itself, even if he had to script that future in the blood of his own kin.

  Keller was at least an exotic noblewoman from beyond the pale. The entire rank and title of Wildgraf existed to frame such people, to place them into the Imperial hierarchy. As a barbarian queen from far away, perfect for Keller.

  And it was appropriate to reward Arlo’s chivalry. Sigmund wasn’t sure he would have given the man both a Colonelcy and a Knighthood, but either would have easily been within the realm, given his behavior and apparent reputation.

  No, those two rewards were odious, but not repellant.

  It was the last person that had been a bridge too far for Sigmund.

  Moirrey Kermode.

  Sigmund had read the files Imperial Intelligence had assembled on the woman. She had personally killed one of their most experienced assassins at Ballard, and then murdered a Colonel of the Imperial Security Bureau at Thuringwell.

  Her inventions had seriously damaged IFV Amsel at Qui-Ping, and wrought nearly incalculable economic and psychological damage across the entire Cahllepp Frontier. To say nothing of Petron, Ballard, or Thuringwell.

  She had single-handedly altered the balance of power across the entire frontier zone between Fribourg and Aquitaine.

  And we were going to reward her for that?

  There had been six female Ritters in the two centuries of the Fribourg Empire. Sigmund had tasked Imperial Security with confirming.

  Kermode would be the seventh.

  And she wasn’t even of noble blood. At least the Fifty Families that made up the backbone of Aquitaine were well-bred.

  No, Kermode was a farm-girl from the barbarity of Ramsey, someplace out in a fringe kingdom called Lincolnshire, halfway to the edge of the galaxy itself.

  And Johannes was going to make her an Imperial Lady.

  Sigmund fought to keep his hands from clenching into fists, to keep his face from snarling. To keep breathing normally.

  He and Kermode locked eyes across ten meters of space, just for a moment.

  Bile and vitriol flowed both directions, behind poised, neutral smiles.

  Sigmund nodded once. Short. Sharp. Promising.

  Kermode reciprocated.

  She actually smiled at him.

  And then the bitch curtsied with a tilt to her head and a soft giggle.

  Sigmund felt a knife probing his guts as he turned and made his way from the room.

  CHAPTER XXII

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC SEPTEMBER 30, 398 IMPERIAL PALACE, WERDER, ST. LEGIER

  Jessica had been warned by Captain Baumgärtner that circumstances had dictated a change from this evening’s original planned affair. Instead of fêting her, it was a celebration for Vo. The Imperial had even delivered a personal apology from Admiral Wachturm, and a plea for understanding and promise to make it up to her later.

  Privately, she marked a ledger book against a bet she had made with herself six months ago when she last saw this man.

  She had doubted then that the rest of the Imperium would accept such a gesture for Jessica Keller at diplomatic value, preferring to see it on its face instead.

  Still, the crowd for the occasion was large and festive. Seventeen men, including the Emperor, wore the distinct maroon cloak that marked the Ritters. Each had made a point to personally, individually congratulate Vo and shake his hand.

  Jessica smiled like a mother hen, even as she felt like a she-bear in this midst.

  As was her custom, she had abstained from all beverage of unknown provenance. If the Imperials chose to be offended, that was their prerogative, but she was not about to risk assassination here. Marcelle had a soft canteen with water in it, if Jessica needed it. Willow had several small bottles of wine in a messenger bag if the situation warranted.

  Jessica found the crowd dynamics amusing as folks mingled.

  Desianna and Moirrey had stayed close, of choice, as had Marcelle and Willow, of duty.

  Vo was circulating and accepting words of encouragement, towering above most of the crowd by a head, even the Emperor and the Red Admiral, surrounded by one or more of the men from the 189th at all times.

  In the process of the crowd moving, a space had opened around her. Folks would smile and nod in greeting and then carefully go about their way. A few had muttered hurried greetings. But none dared cross the meter-wide gulf around her that appeared bottomless.

  A man caught her eye, emerging from the crowd and considering that gap, psychological rather than physical, that separated Fribourg from Aquitaine, or perhaps Corynthe. By dress, another Imperial Navy Captain, like Wachturm’s Hendrik Baumgärtner, with the five gold rings on each cuff. She couldn’t recognize the rest of the tags and badges on his chest and collar to place him past that.

  That suggested the man was a staff officer of some sort, rather than a line commander.

  The crowd eddied around him as he licked his lips and considered that fateful step. As though a hangman’s noose awaited.

  Jessica decided to disrupt the school of pretty fish around her in her own way. She stepped towards the man with a smile of reassurance. She nearly laughed out loud as the little fishies suddenly scattered away, as though a shark had appeared in their midst from the darkness.

  It was a petty revenge, but it still felt good.

  She addressed the man standing suddenly closer
to her than he had planned.

  “Captain?” she said pleasantly.

  “Torsten Wald,” he replied with a nod, perhaps a touch hurriedly.

  Up close, he was average height, giving him half a head on Jessica, who had worn low boots tonight instead of stiletto heels. His build was verging on skinny, with curly, dark hair cut short.

  “Captain Wald,” Jessica smiled politely. “How may I help you?”

  As she had expected, the man took a half-step backwards, separating them again by a polite meter. However, he did it with a weirdly odd hitch, shifting all his weight onto his left leg, balancing there precariously for a moment, and then stepping his right foot back and pulling himself back into balance with his hips and his shoulders.

  Something must have shown on her face. Or he was expecting her reaction. His smile was somewhere between disarming and a polite grimace.

  “Mid-femur amputation eleven years ago,” he explained. “Accidentally traded a normal life for being a hero.”

  Jessica nodded. She felt the same, many days.

  In an alternate universe, one where computers were allowed to push the envelope of sophistication, she could imagine an artificial limb so natural that no one could tell the difference. Certainly, Suvi had constructed herself an entire android body using the ancient technology.

  But that way lay damnation.

  Aquitaine might barely tolerate such a thing. Fribourg not at all. The man probably had a hinged, mechanical peg leg, like an ancient pirate.

  “I see,” Jessica replied neutrally.

  There wasn’t much to say. And he had probably heard it all by now.

  Around her, she could feel the other women slowly being pulled into her new orbit, forcing the entire room’s gravity well to adjust.

  “How should I address you, madam?” Captain Wald asked carefully.

  Jessica studied his face for a clue, but found none. The man was holding his cards close. Marcelle and Willow were probably already preparing to take him out if he presented a threat. Desianna and Moirrey perhaps as well. The latter two might also be smiling at him right now, and they might not.

  She could imagine the courage it would require, for a single man to walk into that circle of strangers, of women. She would give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Militarily, Fleet Centurion,” she said merrily. “Diplomatically, Queen Jessica. Socially, Wildgraf Keller.”

  Let him make of that what he would. It would slice his true intent down quickly, a Gordian knot unravelled.

  The man nodded as a placeholder and considered his words.

  The silence stretched.

  They must be good words.

  “It is a question I would address to the Fleet Centurion then,” he said finally.

  She could hear the stress under his voice.

  “But I would not intend to give offense by suggesting you share military secrets with me, madam,” he stuttered, blushing furiously.

  “Ask, Captain,” Jessica replied mildly. “I will judge.”

  “Just so,” he nodded, taking a breath for courage. “If I may, I am an economist, so my studies of your campaigns are, by their nature, economic in nature, rather than military.”

  “Go on,” Jessica prompted him.

  She wondered where this would take them, especially considering the variety of naval uniforms around them tonight.

  “2218 Svati Prime,” Captain Wald explained, taking her back to the beginning of what historians on both sides of the border were now calling Keller’s Raid, in spite of her every effort to the contrary.

  “The first, or the second time?” she asked.

  “Both, in fact,” he stated. “You attacked other worlds on the Cahllepp Frontier, but this was the only place you played your so-called practical jokes. Why only there?”

  Jessica smiled, a true smile. She had studied pitifully little economics in school, barely a quarter, but quite a bit of human psychology.

  Admirals did not think with their pocket books. They reacted with the hearts and their guts.

  “A rat will go insane far quicker on a diet of random rewards and punishments, Captain,” she said. “Straight penance becomes a thing to be endured, and all creatures can endure far longer than we ever anticipate.”

  “So the chaos of the infliction becomes the value of the outcome,” he said with a sigh of sudden enlightenment.

  “My team destroyed less than one hundred second-line fighters with third rate crews during the entire campaign,” she said. “We destroyed one orbital station, captured one hospital ship, and mildly damaged IFV Amsel, the Blackbird. What were the psychological costs?”

  “Trade on that entire frontier is only now approaching seventy-eight percent of what it was before,” Wald noted with growing understanding. “And that represents a five percent jump just in the year since the Peace was signed and ships, both neutral and Aquitaine, have begun to cross the frontier again.”

  The man paused and studied her far closer than he had before. He had green eyes.

  “And Thuringwell contributed so little to the Imperial economy as to be not even a footnote on sector reports,” he continued, quieter.

  “And yet, the Fribourg Empire sued for Peace, in reaction,” Jessica said in a cold, ominous voice, taking half a step forward as she spoke

  The drop in noise drew him closer as well.

  “What are you?” he whispered fiercely.

  “Retribution,” she whispered back.

  Time hung cold, electric between them.

  Captain Wald staggered back half a step and caught himself.

  “My most profuse apologies, m’lady,” he stumbled over his words. “I meant no offense.”

  “None taken, Captain,” she smile lightly.

  “Your Majesty,” a rich, baritone voice rang out. “If I may intrude?”

  Jessica came back into herself and glanced to her right.

  Emmerich Wachturm had lost weight since she had seen him last, four years ago. The mass of bulk around the middle had melted away, showing what he must have looked like twenty years ago, at the peak of his physical prowess. His hair was completely gray now, on its way to white, but the blue eyes had lost none of their sparkling luster. He was a clean shaven as the Emperor.

  And his bright crimson uniform had been tailored to his new shape with an expert eye. Jessica had two such teachers standing within easy reach. With Desianna and Moirrey around, plus growing up with Indira, she could appreciate these things.

  “Absolutely, Admiral Wachturm,” she said breezily. “Captain Wald and I were just having a most enlightening conversation. Weren’t we, Captain?”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Wald said diplomatically. “Thank you for enduring my pestering and curiosity.”

  “Not at all,” Jessica replied. “I look forward to chatting again.”

  “Your Majesty,” Wald bowed to her, and then the women around her. “Ladies. Admiral.”

  And then he was gone, leaving Emmerich Wachturm in his stead.

  Something warm fled with him.

  “And how may I be of service to the Red Admiral, this evening?” Jessica smiled enigmatically up at the man.

  It was a diplomatic event. She could sense the man coming to drag her to meet various folks and blather meaninglessly. None would probably be as interesting as Captain Wald, but this was the Imperial Court, so it behooved her to deal with circumstance of birth as a governing contract, rather than excellence.

  She would teach them otherwise yet.

  CHAPTER XXIII

  IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 176/010/01. IMPERIAL PALACE, WERDER, ST. LEGIER

  Casey took advantage of this time with her mother.

  The Empress had specialists who could French-braid her long, blond hair, but Mother always preferred the way her youngest daughter handled the task.

  Plus, it left them alone for an hour to talk, without any of the Ladies in Waiting underfoot.

  Mother Kati sat in a comfortable chair, faci
ng a wall of glass mirrors lit to eliminate all shadows, all secrets. Casey stood behind, deftly twining handfuls of newly-brushed hair and lacing them.

  “What did you think of last night?” Mother asked, her eyes closed and head leaned back as her youngest daughter worked.

  Casey paused and considered her mental notes.

  “Will Father want to locate a spouse for Colonel Arlo?” she asked. “An Imperial Lady?”

  The Empress opened her eyes and stared back in the mirror.

  “Oh?” she asked. “Something I should know?”

  Casey considered mother’s words and blushed furiously at the implication.

  “No. Not like that,” she replied. “He is certainly physically impressive, if a touch rough around the edges, but there is no art in that man’s soul.”

  “No, I would agree with you there, Casey,” Mother said. “What brings this on?”

  “Power in Fribourg is often cemented with marriages,” Casey replied, unable to help the growly edge to her voice. “We have rewarded Colonel Arlo, and made a step towards binding him to the Empire, but it is only a step, and can be easily undone later, if circumstances warrant.”

  “There are days,” Mother said quietly, “when you sound more like your sister, or your father, than yourself. But I suppose it reflects well that you can think in those terms.”

  Kati paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts before she continued.

  “Keller would obviously be a good candidate to seal the Peace,” Mother said. “She is the most prominent Aquitaine commander to be single. Thankfully, she is too old to be a good match for Ekke.”

  Casey snorted under her breath and went back to her braiding.

  “Ekke is a man,” Casey griped quietly. “He wants a woman who is dumb, and beautiful, and pliant.”

  “And who will bear him many children,” Mother agreed. “Just as your sister will do for some man we have yet to find, one of these days.”

  Mother paused again, her eyes focused intently on her daughter in the reflection.

  “What does Casey want?” she asked finally.

  Casey felt her stomach go cold. They were as alone as anyone in the palace could ever be, with bodyguards just outside the door and whole tribes of servants on call and just waiting for purpose to define their lives.