by Blaze Ward
“Corynthe is the kingdom, Petron is the planet, Corynthe is also the capital city.”
“Ah,” Jessica said. “And what would you prefer?”
“Until recently,” he said, “I was known as Warlock when flying. Before I was a governor.” He paused for a moment. “My mother still calls me Daneel.”
“Very well, Warlock,” she said with a light smile. Pilots were pilots. “Now, quiet, so you don’t miss the show.”
Moirrey’s pixie voice filled the room. It was like jasmine on a summer day.
“Good afternoon, children. Today on Adventures In The Land Of The Giant People, we have two rocks. They’s bigguns, too. Lots o’other rocks as well, all dancing pretty–like to Newton’s First Symphony, but we really only cares abouts two.”
She fell silent for a few moments before her voice returned, with an extra edge added.
“Can you see the pretty spins, boys an’ girls? It’s what a bullet sees when you shoots it at a grapefruit, only slower, and spinning the wrong way. A pretty, pretty, little, sad grapefruit, all blotchy brown and orange. It looks up and thinks to itself: Here now, what’s going on? Who are you?”
Ishikura, Warlock, turned to say something, but Jessica put up her hand and stopped him without looking over. This was too good to miss.
When she felt him subside back into silence, Jessica put her hand back down. For a moment, it landed on the back of his wrist. She glanced down and twitched it back, out of contact, willing her blush not to show.
Moirrey’s voice took on a deeper note, an ominous tone as she switched roles back and forth. “Who? Me? Just a little rock, passing through a great bigs neighborhood. I got lonely over there and decided to see what it was like around the big gasball.”
“Oy, well, ya can’t do that. I was already here, ya know. Go find somewhere else to hang out.”
“I can’t do that, little grapefruit. I gots me a really good shove to come over here and I’m like a pig on ice right now. I mean, I kinda hafts to go that way. I’m really sorry you ended up in the way, but they’s not a lot I can do. Gots ta tell you, though, it’s like falling down an elevator shaft, looking at you like this. I’m feeling a might twisted up. And, oh, hey, you really can’t get out of the way?”
“No, you lummox, I was here first. Have you gots insurance for all the boom yer gonna do when you hits me?”
“Sorry. Nobody told me it was gonna be this kind of party.”
“Well shear off then. Now. Oh, shits. OhMyGodIcantgetoutoftheway!!!!!!! SKAAAAAAA–WWWWWWIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
The spinning image of Alpha was suddenly replaced by a shot from Auberon’s bow, well away and off the ecliptic plane. The asteroid fell into the moon with a graceful plunge, like a knife skewering an apple, or a diver entering a pool.
The energy released looked quaint, until the scale of ripples racing away from the impact wound became apparent. A small volcano of mud and hot stone squelched up, like the splash from dropping a big rock in a pond.
“An’ that, children, concludes today’s lesson in planetary billiards. Ya hits ‘em dead center and they go boom. If’n yer engineers was less competent, they’da hits off–center and looked like amateurs. Unlessin’ of course, you needed a right proper amount of English on that shot to draw for the eight ball. Never play billiards for money with an engineer.”
The screen went dark. Jessica could imagine the crew’s giggles around the ship.
She felt the weight of Warlock’s gaze as he turned to look at her, silent for several seconds.
She glanced over, one eyebrow raised.
“And if we had decided to be dead–enders down there, you’d have still done that?”
Jessica felt her a frown form, allowed it. “Warlock,” she replied, “Lincolnshire will be upset with me that I didn’t do exactly that to you and your people. With luck, Corynthe won’t feel the same way.”
“And you?” he asked.
“I would have found it a waste of potential. Yours, and the other seventy–seven survivors. At least now you can do something useful with the rest of your lives.”
He paused to study her face. Whatever it was he sought, he apparently found.
“I note that there was an Imperial corvette in orbit when all this started,” he began, dangling the rest of the sentence off into limbo.
Jessica cocked her head and raised an eyebrow at him by way of reply.
“What happened to the ambassador?”
Jessica considered the man before her. Not just another pirate, it seemed.
“I found no ambassador, Warlock,” she began. “However, admiral Wachturm is currently a guest aboard this ship while we investigate to make sure his activities are commensurate with a neutral vessel in this situation. He’s being kept in splendid isolation until then.”
“He’s an Imperial, Keller.”
“The rules are far more complicated than that, Warlock,” she replied tartly. “We do not always fight, especially in places like this. Without rules, we are no better than the pirates we fight.”
He recoiled as if slapped.
“We have rules, Aquitaine,” he said in a quiet, hot whisper.
Jessica gave him the kind look she remembered her mother giving her when she was young and had said something utterly banal and stupid.
He started to say something else and subsided.
“Perhaps,” he continued, more subdued, “when we arrive at Corynthe, I will be able to show you some of the better places and sights. It would be nice to give you a better opinion of my home.”
“Perhaps, Warlock,” she said as she rose and started towards the door. She turned halfway there and faced him.
“There is one person I might introduce you to,” she focused her gaze on him, a cat staring down at a suddenly–awakened vole. “Before I left Ramsey, we had the honor of meeting a gentleman named Tanis Bedrosian. I was so impressed with the man that I brought him with me as well. After disarming all of his goons at gunpoint, you understand.”
“I am familiar with the feeling, madam,” he said with a frosty tartness of his own as his face fell into a snarl. “He is not, however, any friend of mine. I will refrain from spitting on your deck at the mention of his name, purely out of hospitality.”
“Indeed?” she replied. “Perhaps he will feel the same way.”
Jessica turned and continued to the door. His words brought her up short, but she did not turn back.
“Are you ever off duty, Keller?”
She paused to consider her response. There was at least one honest thing she could say today. “No.”
Chapter XIX
Date of the Republic October 14, 393 Outbound from Sarmarsh System
Auberon, like every vessel in the Republic of Aquitaine Navy, had a small holding block for prisoners, attached to the marine barracks to make it easy. It was rarely used, as locking someone in a cabin and disabling the door worked equally well.
The holding block had a more sinister purpose.
Four cells made up the block, on the sides of a hallway, facing each other, with an interrogation room on the end, facing the guard room. The design ensured a maximum amount of psychological discomfort for people put there.
Jessica had rarely come down here. The marines ran a very tight ship, tighter than most, and crew discipline issues had dropped off quickly when the former command centurion, Augustine Kwok, had departed.
Today Navin the Black had met her personally, along with two of his marines. She recognized Tawfeek from their adventures on Ramsey.
She nodded at the giant man as she entered. He held a clipboard in one hand that seemed to be as much a part of his uniform as his sidearm.
“How is our prisoner shaping up, gentlemen?” she asked.
Navin smiled down at her. It was a very evil smile, on a giant of a man. “Given their history together, I felt it would be useful to designate Tawfeek as bad cop,” he said, his voice a surprisingly smooth tenor coming out of
such a huge frame. “Arlo has been playing the role of good cop. We have not, as yet, turned the screws on the man, there being no real rush to get anything out of him except compliance.”
“Very good,” Jessica replied, engaging all of them with her smile. “That’s ready to change. Arlo, what do we know?”
The man looked the part of a street thug, big and burly, but Jessica knew from his files that he was extremely intelligent and a voracious reader. He was marked to become a dragoon of his own soon, on a smaller vessel, perhaps with his next promotion.
“Well, sir,” he said, all spit and polish. “Take a typical punk from the streets and give him a taste of money and power, and you get a bully. This one thinks he’s pretty smart also, but he was a big fish in a small pond on Ramsey. Folks in my old neighborhood would have eaten him alive.”
“I see,” she said. “What are his signature weaknesses?”
“Vanity and a desire to demonstrate a pseudo–intellectual superiority, sir.”
“Pseudo?”
“Sir,” Arlo replied, “I’d compare him to a box of rocks, but the rocks would be insulted by the comparison.”
“I see. And what will my gender do to the equation?”
“Haven’t brought it up with him much, but I would expect a superiority complex. You got the drop on him, but he thinks that it was luck, not planning. Obviously, a dumb–ass.”
“Very nice, Arlo,” she smiled up at the trooper. “Will it be better to interview him across the barrier field in his cell, or get him into the interrogation room across a table?”
She watched the marine consider the options carefully. His mouth twisted to one side as he thought.
“Best guess, commander,” he said finally, “the interrogation room plays to his ego and loosens him up. Depending on how intense you plan to get, he might get stupid and try to do something physical. Normally, I would suggest Tawfeek or the dragoon be in the room, just in case, but it might be more embarrassing to let you hand him his ass by yourself. Your call.”
Jessica studied the three men. Obviously, her training sessions with the fighting robot were better known with the crew, at least the marines, than she had expected, although none of them studied Valse d’Glaive, as far as she knew.
Not yet, anyway.
“Arlo,” she said after a moment of thought, “you bring him to the room. Tawfeek, you stay handy outside if I need help. Navin, you monitor everything, please.”
The men nodded at her and began to move. She stepped out of sight with Navin and Tawfeek as Arlo went down the long hallway. When he returned, she headed down.
The door to the interrogation room opened as she approached. “Tawfeek, you wait here,” she said in a hard voice. Bad cop was probably the best way to play a punk like Bedrosian.
“Aye, sir,” the marine replied, stationing himself directly across from the door, right in the other man’s line of sight, as she entered.
Bedrosian, the punk from Ramsey, was seated uncomfortably at a table. His fancy clothes had been replaced with a simple pair of pants and a tunic from the ship’s stores, dark gray in this case. No attempt had been made to get a good fit for the man. Perhaps an effort had been made to find the wrong size, judging on his appearance.
Lack of access to some manner of intoxicant had apparently been rough on him, evident in the shakiness in his hands and a general twitchiness to his eyes. She had no pity for him.
By the time she got back to Lincolnshire, they might decide to hang him for her. Until then, he was a sponge for her to squeeze. If he was especially useful, she might just drop him off at Corynthe and let him make his own way.
Jessica took the chair across from the punk. She studied him for several seconds. His hair was too long, and without something to slick it back, it tumbled down into his eyes. On some men, the look was sexy. Bedrosian wasn’t that man.
“Your friends at Sarmarsh IV have been annihilated,” she said to open the conversation.
She was rewarded by a flinch he quickly covered.
The moment dragged.
“How?” he said finally, disbelief barely registering above a whisper.
“All those guns?” she sneered at him, “not particularly useful when you destroy the moon they’re standing on.”
“You destroyed…”
“I warned you that this was serious business, Tanis Bedrosian,” she said, cutting him off sharply. “When I get to Corynthe, I plan on having a very serious conversation with the King of the Pirates about borders and manners.”
She could see the whites of his eyes for the first time. He remained silent. Awe, fear, or shock, she wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter. She wanted him on his back foot.
“Just so you know,” she continued, “with them gone, the folks in Ramsey are going to clean house. All your friends just might be gone, unless they get out fast enough. I fully plan on turning you over to the authorities when we get back. That is, unless you give me a reason not to.”
She let the bait dangle.
His tongue appeared, just enough to wet suddenly dry lips. His Adam’s apple worked as he swallowed past a suddenly tight throat.
She let him stew. Waiting was probably her strongest suit. She let her face fall into a simple smile. That seemed to stick an extra bevy of needles into his skin.
Several times, he opened his mouth to speak, but closed it, silent.
Finally, he spoke.
“They’ll kill me,” he whispered.
Jessica leaned close across the table.
“They don’t have you, Bedrosian,” she whispered back with a black widow’s intimacy. “I do. You should worry about me killing you. The King of the Pirates can’t get to you unless I let him.”
“Not him…” he said, but suddenly clammed up. Rather than speak, she watched him lean back in his chair as far as he could get from her without actually moving it.
She waited, but he lapsed into silence, staring at her with a haunted look.
“Have it your way, friend,” she said finally. “You have the Aquitaine Navy between you and the bad guys.”
“It won’t be enough,” he said, then collapsed into fearful silence.
She couldn’t get another word out of him.
CORYNTHE
Chapter XX
Date of the Republic October 24, 393 Jumpspace Approaching Petron
Jessica escorted Moirrey into her office and saw the young engineer seated comfortably before taking her own chair.
“How can I be of service, ma’am?” Moirrey asked simply. She was rarely one for small talk, another reason Jessica prized her company.
She considered the woman now, the one she referred to in her head as her evil engineering gnome. Perhaps the Head Gnome.
“Last year,” Jessica began, “you did wonderful things for me, and saved us all, with Project Mischief.”
She waited for Moirrey to nod before she continued.
“Now, I need you to do your magic again, Moirrey.”
“What’ve the buggers got this time?” Moirrey asked, her pixie smile turning puckish.
Jessica smiled back. “Medium–sized carriers with a wide variety of melee–style fighters. It’s almost a junkyard worth of strange ships, leftovers and one–offs from everywhere I’ve ever seen or heard of. No two are going to be the same.”
“New stuff?” Moirrey asked, her eyes turning sly as she twisted her head to one side.
“No,” Jessica replied as she thought about it. “Older. I have an image of the one that was at Sarmarsh IV. The newest fighter it carried was an Imperial A–6 fighter. Plus at least two very old Republic M–3 Crossbows, which had to have been originally built at least seventy years ago.”
“Yus, ma’am. They’s Motherships and they be flying uglies of all shapes and sizes.”
“Uglies?” Jessica had never heard the term applied to fighter craft before.
“Like ye said, commander,” Moirrey continued, her burr growing as she warmed to her topic. “Is a
junkyard o’stuff. Ya canna buy replacement parts when they break, so’s you weld new stuff on ‘stead. An’ that breaks, so you hack it off an’ weld more on. Or you gets a front half that works and hook it to a back half that flies. No two’s the same, but that’s okay –cause yer pilots is a crew o’pirates and they keep tinkering.”
She lapsed into silence for a moment as she thought.
“Missiles be nice, but nots enough,” she continued.
Jessica leaned back and watched the woman’s eyes flicker back and forth across whiteboards and engineering specs in her mind. It was like watching a master chef in her kitchen. Probably smelled that way in her head.
“Plus, some crazy bastard’s like to do something weird an’ centerline a Type–3 cannon with a couple of engines and a cockpit and call it good.”
“A Type–3?” Jessica blurted out in surprise.
Auberon was built on a Heavy Cruiser hull design. Those ships normally carried six Type–3 beams. Big guns. Auberon had only two, but she was a carrier, so her flight wing made up for it. Even the GunShip Necromancer mounted only Type–2 beams. Granted, a triple–weapon, nose and both wings, that could parallax, but still. Much smaller.
“Aye, ma’am,” Moirrey chirped. “Is a can opener. Seen a picture of one back home. Ya fires it and the whole ship shuts down. Ya relights the engines and starts recharging the batteries. Maybe five or ten minutes later you can fire again. Assuming you didn’t cook nothing along the way. And nobody cooks you.”
“Okay,” Jessica said, “so how do we fight off waves of these things?”
“That will require more Mischief, ma’am,” Moirrey responded. “How soon?”
“We’ll be at Petron in a few days, Moirrey,” Jessica said. “After that, I don’t know. Hopefully, never. Possibly quickly.”
“Rights,” Moirrey said as she rose. “First, I builds it ugly. Then I gets all elegant n’thin’s.” She saluted, turned, and scooted out the door.
Jessica watched her go. If only it were a simple as that. Although, for an engineer, it might just be that. Hand them a problem and get out of the way. Let them get technical on it.
