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

by Blaze Ward

  It reminded Vo of a skinning knife someone in Fourth Saxon had used on a deer they had spooked from cover during a patrol.

  Danville met his eyes and they both nodded.

  Shoot first was the wrong order to give, if they wanted to do this in relative secrecy. And Danville understood that.

  He should have said kill first…

  CHAPTER LVIII

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC NOVEMBER 8, 398 ABOARD AMSEL, ABOVE ST. LEGIER

  Somewhere, a deck above and a little forward, Jessica knew that there was a Flag Bridge she could use, so new that most of the screens were still covered with that thin, factory-installed plastic film dockyard crews left in place.

  She supposed she should be there, taking the Emperor with her and getting out of everyone’s hair here, but she chose to stay put.

  Corbeil had things well in hand. Saar had only been mildly injured by the explosion, but was down in Medical right now getting everything checked out. She would probably have to talk to the Chief Surgeon at some point, and see if she would have to order Saar to bed. Nobody else on this ship could.

  Besides, these men deserved the honor of this day, regardless of how it turned out. King Gunter Wiegand, Gunter I, the first Fribourg Emperor, had been the last monarch to lead a warfleet into battle.

  Until fate had made it necessary for Karl VIII, Kasimira Wiegand, to do the same.

  Jessica glanced over at Casey, seated between Marcelle and Willow as if she held Court with two Ladies-in-Waiting at hand.

  Casey smiled back, but Jessica could see the rigidity underneath her mask, a seventeen-year-old pretending she knew exactly what she was doing.

  In a way, she did.

  Casey’s job was to be seen. To put a spine in the backs of men who might otherwise be willing to let the situation go.

  To let the coup d’état happen on their watch without stopping it.

  It took a lot of guts to simply stand up and say “No,” when everyone else said “Sure, why not?”

  Jessica looked forward to her own grand and magnificent Senatorial Court Martial when she got home, regardless of the fact that she was acting here as a private citizen with the explicit approval of that same Senate written down in documents secured on the planet below as well as back home on Petron.

  She still had enough enemies in Aquitaine’s Senate. Someone would be baying for her blood.

  Jessica simply hoped that Nils, Tadej, and Judit would see her actions in the broader context. If she won today, she might have truly won the war.

  That thought suddenly rocked Jessica to her core.

  She could win the war. Today. Now.

  She looked around the deck with new eyes.

  Up until this moment, she had been on the defensive, reacting to circumstances she could not dominate, running across a series of rolling logs and hoping not to be crushed between them on her inevitable misstep.

  “Confirmed kill, Admiral,” her Science Officer called, or whatever Fribourg called the position. “The Raider has exploded. I’m not sure how far out his transport is, but we’ll watch for that explosion as well.”

  Energiya.

  A separable transportation module that contained Jump Drives and generators and engines. Designed to be detached before battle, allowing the warships to be amazingly small and compact for their firepower. Especially considering how big the ancient jump drives were.

  According to the Imperial file, every single one self-destructed as soon as it got the signal that the Buran half of the equation was destroyed. Without fail, as if they were two halves of one being.

  Who knew what the Old Gods were capable of?

  “Sir?” Corbeil asked suddenly. “How did those two fighter craft manage that attack? I’ve never even heard of Aquitaine being able to do something like that.”

  Jessica smiled enigmatically back at the man. Neither had she, until she had watched it the first time on her flight out here, but she wasn’t about to tell these men.

  She still might have to fight them tomorrow.

  “That’s the Corynthe Navy, Commander,” she temporized with an enigmatic smile. “Once upon a time, pirates. They see impossible as a challenge, Corbeil, not a limit.”

  “I see,” the man replied with a wry smile. “And the impossible range on those Type-3’s, as well?”

  “Your engineers will be able to tell you how, once they study the logs, Commander,” she said. “You just have to listen to them, first.”

  He grinned, rather than replying.

  “Comm Officer,” Jessica raised her voice to fill the entire bridge. “Order all vessels to stand down and maintain their current station under Imperial authority and my position as Karl VIII’s Admiral of the Fleet. Notify me if anyone deviates. Then broadcast our scans of the Raider exploding to the surface. Override every transmitter and every ground station you can. If you had a proper art department on this vessel, I would have them spin us up a quick documentary to ram it all home.”

  Half the bridge actually turned to look over their shoulders at her, utter befuddlement writ on their faces.

  “The War is over, gentlemen,” she said with a harsh smile. “Now, it is necessary for us, for you, for them, to win the Peace. And then the Emperor can take back her throne.”

  That got through to them.

  History wasn’t over yet.

  CHAPTER LIX

  IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 176/11/08. DITTMAR PALACE, WERDER, ST. LEGIER

  The image was shaky as Sigmund watched.

  A scan log, zoomed up until the image itself turned grainy with pixelated distance. IFV Amsel, Wachturm’s new Blackbird, sitting in a trans-gravity orbit as the Roughshark emerged from jump into a fury of defensive fire from Keller’s flagship.

  Savaging the Battleship with the same Mauler that had heavily damaged the orbital fortress, before then leaping to safety.

  Cut.

  The Buran Raider, now sitting low in orbit after his jump, quietly holding space, with the green and blue marble of St. Legier below and the curve of space in the distance.

  The shot pulling back until the ship was a triangular, gray knife.

  Two unknown, tiny Starfighters appearing out of thin air as he watched, racing downhill at full speed and firing simultaneously.

  The Raider imploding in a plasma burst rather than exploding, like a soap bubble popping, leaving barely any debris to fall to earth.

  Sigmund had turned off the words so he didn’t have to hear the woman’s voice again. It didn’t matter which of them spoke. The rage they engendered would be the same.

  He hadn’t come this far to fail to a woman. Either woman.

  Any woman.

  “Security,” he yelled as he stood. “I’m going to the Imperial Palace now. Arrange it.”

  One man, a Lieutenant in Imperial Security livery, looked as though he might argue the point until Sigmund focused his anger on the man like a spotlight.

  The fool finally nodded instead, but Sigmund memorized his face and added it to the list in his head entitled Monday.

  Everything had hinged on holding that fool Karl out of contact while bluffing the Fleet into accepting Sigmund in his place. There were enough Admirals and Captains that would be put out of work by a true Peace with Aquitaine that they would have been willing to go along, given a fait accompli.

  All that had been required of him was to be someplace safe when the day dawned. Someplace remote, but not too remote. Out of the direct action, so nobody could blame him.

  Plausible deniability.

  It was not my choice, but I have been forced by circumstances to ascend to the throne in this time of need. Anything to save the Empire from chaos.

  Around him, all his careful plans were on the verge of falling apart if he didn’t act quickly.

  He grabbed his mug of coffee and drank the last, cold, bitter dregs from the bottom. Transport would take time.

  “Communications,” he rasped heavily. “Get me a secured channel to Admiral Bakemann
aboard Adler.”

  There were still enough squadrons in orbit to destroy the interlopers, if he could just get them to move.

  It would take only one squadron to crystalize the decisions of the rest. They could join him in saving the Empire, or throw their lot in with a pair of women intent on overthrowing the natural order of things.

  With nearly forty major warships of various sizes, he had been counting on twenty percent supporting him outright, ten percent opposing him briefly, and seventy percent sitting tight to see which way the solar wind would blow.

  A steward came by with fresh coffee.

  Sigmund waited briefly while the man refilled his mug, drank half, and then had the man top it up again. At this rate, he would need to urinate profusely in another hour, but that could wait.

  Everything could wait until he wore the crown.

  “Communications?” Sigmund yelled. “Where is he?”

  It had been several minutes. That fool should have been on the line within thirty seconds, especially if he wanted to keep his uniform.

  Another one for the Monday list.

  “Atmospheric disturbances and electromagnetic echoes are causing communications problems with our satellites, Your Majesty,” the man replied in a careful voice, aware that he was the messenger that might be shot. “Adler is currently on station on the far side of the planet from us, moving slowly relative to the ground.”

  “Keep trying,” Sigmund snarled.

  That doomed Lieutenant from Imperial Security appeared in his line of sight and snapped his heels together smartly, as if professionalism at this point would somehow protect the man.

  “The motor pool is prepared, Your Majesty,” he said simply, careful to stare at a horizon somewhere over Sigmund’s left shoulder.

  At least the man realized how thin the ice he was on had gotten.

  Sigmund threw himself to his feet. The monitors around him had nothing new. Nothing he wanted to see.

  “Send a signal to Grundman,” Sigmund commanded. “Tell him to meet me at the palace so we can talk.”

  At this point, he needed to meet with Grundman personally, and take possession of Karl and the rest of the former Imperial family before anything else slipped through his fingers.

  For a moment, Sigmund seriously considered divorcing Karya so he could marry the older daughter. Not the most promising start to his reign, but at a swoop, it invalidated any claim by the younger.

  Plus, Stephanya was only nineteen, so she had few legal rights to resist him. She might even be useful to produce a new generation of heirs, to go with the children Karya had borne him. She wasn’t an unattractive woman, just far too headstrong and opinionated.

  He would enjoy correcting those aspects of her personality, if he chose to keep her alive.

  Perhaps that was the easiest path to unifying the Empire.

  Kill two Emperors and a Crown Prince, and marry the surviving girl. The current Empress would be easily controlled at that point, perhaps he could even keep her around as some sort of Dowager, along with Karya.

  Sigmund smiled at the men around him.

  Yes, this would all work out fine.

  Now he just had to go shoot his cousins.

  CHAPTER LX

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC NOVEMBER 8, 398 IMPERIAL PALACE GROUNDS, WERDER, ST. LEGIER

  Vo had never known anything like it to compare. Anameleck Prime had a few public parks and former estates preserved like this, but he had grown up in the poor parts of the capital city. Folks like him never got to visit the countryside.

  Worse, all this greenery around him literally amounted to someone’s backyard, when all was said and done. Kilometers and kilometers of trees and bushes, large and nearly overgrown, but for paths carved here and there.

  At least Moirrey and Danville were at home, slowly working their way along, disabling sensors occasionally, marking others for the rest of the group to walk around. It had gotten the team here.

  A mild rain had engulfed them at some point. Nothing ugly, just a miserable, thick curtain that hung over everything, filling leaves that would drip onto the top of your head when you brushed them. Still, it would keep everyone else indoors, and hopefully distract those that weren’t.

  It had helped so far.

  Now, they were penultimate, Vo and his team, squatted down on the edge of a grassy clearing.

  Before him, the Imperial Palace itself. Or part of it. The residential parts. A horseshoe-shaped courtyard nearly two hundred meters across and five hundred long, formed by parts of four red brick buildings.

  There were at least another dozen other buildings beyond these, maybe two dozen. Maps were kinda iffy on the topic and Vo hadn’t paid that much attention.

  Navin the Black would never let him hear the end of it, not memorizing all the possible terrain. Fleet Centurion would just smirk at him.

  But how frequently had he been in a major revolution in a foreign country?

  Doesn’t matter, punk. Always out-prepare your enemy. Think like the Fleet Centurion.

  Vo chuckled to himself, hearing the Dragoon’s bass rumbles in his head.

  “Sir?” Horst whispered from close by.

  Vo smiled at the man.

  “Too much time having fun, Edgar,” Vo said. “Not enough studying maps in case I needed to assault the Palace. The Fleet Centurion would have been better prepared.”

  Horst smiled back.

  “Aye, sir,” he said with a firm nod. “That she would have.”

  Vo was slightly taken aback by how deeply Keller had become part of Fribourg’s culture. That an infantryman from a training division on a remote planet could have that level of surety about the habits of one of their deadliest enemies was an interesting development.

  Was that why they got so crazy when she was the topic of conversation? Was she the Devil, as far as these men were concerned?

  Vo had seen some measure of that in his time on St. Legier, but only from the military. The public considered her some sort of avenging angel.

  Weird.

  Danville and Moirrey interrupted his ruminations by appearing like ghosts out of the brush on one side.

  Cats with canaries in their mouths wouldn’t have smiled so broadly.

  “And?” Vo inquired.

  It must be good.

  “Gots ’em,” Moirrey chirped happily.

  “Oh?”

  “Sir,” Danville picked up the thread. “Building on the right appears interesting. Most buildings have single guards on portals, but this one also has four men posted together on a patio. My guess would be high-value prisoners secured inside that room.”

  “Show me,” Vo said. “Do we know what it is?”

  Moirrey handed him a pair of optics: cute, little, opera glasses barely the size of two of his fingers together. She moved him around and then forward to a new spot in some bushes, before she pointed over his shoulder like a sniper.

  “There.”

  Vo found the spot and flipped a switch to go to three hundred zoom.

  At the college he had attended, after Ballard, a quad like this one would be all open grass, for students walking every which way between buildings.

  This was an overgrown garden. Almost a forest.

  The buildings here were all four stories or more tall, but the trees were that and higher in places, with hedges two and three stories tall, carving everything into little, green valleys and mazes.

  Someone dumb enough to try could probably sneak into the Palace grounds and get himself within three to five meters of the buildings with a little work.

  Of course, most days, there would be guards around who knew the grounds well enough to intercept you. Tomorrow, there might be.

  There.

  Four men in Imperial Security Gray holding rifles, standing guard in the miserable mist, on an open patio itself surrounded on all sides by low bushes.

  Vo counted windows from the nearest corner and memorized the location.

  While it might be n
ice to come at them from the outside, anyone even halfway competent would have locked that outside door, giving whoever was inside enough time to raise alarms or do other evil things.

  They would need to do this from the inside.

  Vo smiled to himself.

  Good thing he happened to have a reformed cat burglar handy. Although, cats were small. Would that have made him a tiger burglar, back in the day? He’d had the height and the reach, but not the layers of muscle.

  Free climbing building facades had left him long and lean when he was seventeen. Navin the Black had turned him into an ogre.

  But he still had the silent step.

  Vo handed Moirrey back her lenses and turned to Horst.

  “Do we have any stunners in this team?” he asked with deadly intent.

  Horst shrugged silently and moved out of sight.

  “Why stunners, sir?” Street whispered curiously.

  Vo fixed the man with a serious stare. The 189th was a mountain division. Alpine in elevation and climate. Outdoor specialists.

  They’d never been through Navin’s version of a Hogan’s Alley. Star Controller Auberon had one they could set up that covered three decks and four hectares, divided into five different environments.

  Assaulting a secured building was one of them.

  “It would be helpful if we had stunners, Street,” he replied after a beat. “So that we could kick in the door firing indiscriminately at everything that moved, and then sort out the friendlies later.”

  Horst was back already.

  “None, sir,” he said. “Thought not, but wanted to make sure nobody had one stuck in a boot that they forgot to mention earlier. You know how the boys can be.”

  “Aye,” Vo agreed, looking over his First Team. “Horst, you and Street do not fire your weapons inside the building until the alarm has been raised, or you get an order from me or Moirrey. Clear?”

  Both men nodded.

  “Danville, you have your knife,” he continued. “The only people authorized to fire are myself and Moirrey.”

  “Me?” the woman chirped in surprise.

  “I’ve read the Fleet Centurion’s reports of your actions on Ballard and Thuringwell, Centurion,” Vo replied. “I don’t have time to run the rest of the men through their paces for three days to see if any of them are as good as you are. I know I am. Understood?”