by Blaze Ward
She took her spot in the line next to a smiling Denis.
“Auberon,” Alber’ roared. “Left face. Color Guard, take the van.”
Orly and her six escorts, the Fife and Drum team, went first. Engineering, Flight Deck, Operations, and various officers were mixed somewhat randomly in the next several lines.
The marines were the last to leave, followed only by the four Command Centurions and then Jessica. That was correct, in her mind, for those marines would be the first into the next battle, right behind her.
Chapter IV
Date of the Republic February 17, 396 SC Auberon. Ladaux System
Everything had been a success. The Acceptance Ceremony, the reception, the mingling.
But it was done now, and Jessica had a more important task today.
One of the few places she had taken advantage of her personal connections to the designers and builders of this grand vessel had been in modifying the secondary gym to fit her needs and desires.
The rest of the crew still had a grand space available, with dozens of machines clumped together like strange metal trolls exposed to dawn’s light. There was still an attached pool in which to do laps, complete with airlock seals to contain it if the vessel ever lost power for the gravplates. Runners could still do laps on a six–lane track with transparent walls on the inside edge to the other folks exercising.
The crew of this ship deserved no less.
But she had pulled rank to have a few bulkheads shifted around. Just enough to create a proper training dojo. Old school. Sand packed tightly into flat, heavy, taupe, canvas bags and pounded down with human heels until it had all the texture and firmness of the one at the fleet training academy. Wood walls painted by hand with love.
Home.
Just inside the door, the clear space was two meters deep and ran the entire width of the space side to side. Here the floors were simple hull metal, painted the same bland off–white as the walls. Nothing to distract the eye when practicing, when centering.
The practice floor was up a half step, a lip that left no doubts as to your standing. Inside or outside.
Again, home.
Jessica was not the superstitious kind. And yet…
This would be the first time she dueled with her personal fighting robot aboard this vessel. She had not even brought it aboard until now.
In her heart, she knew that she kept fearing that the dreams would return. That she would fall back into that place where she had been after Daneel died. After the Goddess of War touched Jessica’s soul and left her four–palmed mark.
She had not claimed this space as hers until now.
She could not.
It had required something greater first.
Not until her father had returned through the airlock and handed her the welding gun he had used to name this vessel, this Star Controller Auberon, did she believe that she wasn’t dreaming.
Not until Orly planted her flag on the deck was it real.
She was a Fleet Lord now.
Not just a Command Centurion out fighting the war with the Fribourg Empire, subject to whatever trade winds and political machinations might drive her hither and yon.
No, she would shape it now.
Fleet Centurion was a statement of purpose. Another glove thrown down in Emperor Karl VII’s path. A challenging slap ringing off both his cheeks.
Do your worst, Fribourg.
She had faced the Red Admiral. She and the Goddess had danced death with the man more than once and won.
She was still here, still breathing, still dangerous.
Jessica took a deep breath and pushed all that nervous energy down and in.
Other schools trained you to push it all out of yourself to find calm. Valse d’Glaive, the Waltz of Swords, took a different tack.
Energy was power. Pushing it out of yourself robbed you of it.
No, pull it in. Drag it down with your breathing. Force it to your very center.
Compress it like a fire diamond held three centimeters behind your navel. Let it power your movements, holding all of your anger, all of your loss.
Jessica let the fire fuse itself inside her.
There.
She took one moment to check herself before stepping onto the mat.
Bare feet to learn to feel the movement of the ground beneath her. Ankle–length forest green leggings tight across her muscles to keep them warm and keep her sweat from splashing. Running shorts in black. An old chaos green uniform undershirt that was too large for her. She had mostly worn it out and wore it to sleep in occasionally. Blood red ribbon to tie back her slowly–graying hair into a French braid that hung between her shoulder blades. Matching red cloth rolled up and tied across her forehead to keep sweat out of her eyes.
Jessica held both her blades loosely and let her muscles flow as she shifted her weight back and forth and popped her neck once. In her left hand, she held a long, straight, single–edged sword, what the combatants called a saber. Instead of something more exotic, it was made of simple steel. Tradition. In her right hand was a much shorter blade, also steel, but heavier, and with a reinforced cross–guard instead of the saber’s basket protecting her fingers: the main–gauche. She had acquired this pair during her Academy days and kept them ever since.
Had it really been nearly twenty years ago?
Across the mat, her opponent awaited her with the patience that only a non–intelligent fighting robot could muster. It was humanoid in shape, male in size, armed with a long blade and a short one, just as she was. Right–handed to her left, as most of her opponents would be.
The robot’s blades were dull, plastic affairs, excellent at leaving a good training welt or bruise, without drawing blood. Jessica’s training blades were dull as well, but only because any edge put to them would be banged off quickly as she struck the thing’s metal hide.
It was faceless and nameless. Much like her foe, the Fribourg Empire.
Karl VII had a name, as did Admiral of the Red Emmerich Wachturm, but neither of them was her opponent now. Karl was safe at home in his palace at St. Legier. Emmerich had been retired after the battle known as First Ballard, and was an Emeritus Professor of Tactics at their equivalent of the Republic of Aquitaine’s Fleet Academy. His students, young and old, would be her adversaries tomorrow.
Jessica had already stretched and warmed up before she’d stepped into the room.
She shrugged and dropped into a fast squat once, bouncing back up to make sure everything was still flexible.
“Fighting Robot activate,” she called across the space. “Challenge Rating Five.”
Five was enough today.
Jessica didn’t have anything to prove to the robot. Only to the universe. She was not working out aggression nor sadness.
No, today, she was dedicating this space to the art of arms. Making it a Temple of War, a sanctuary for the Goddess of War herself.
Kali–ma.
Plus, she wanted to make sure she beat the damned thing the first time she fought it aboard her brand new starship.
Okay, maybe a little superstitious.
After all, Challenge Rating Six was for experts. Her on a good day. Seven was for masters of the blade and the dance. The man who had first introduced her to Valse d’Glaive has assured her that the number of people capable of regularly taking on a fighting robot above Rating Seven could be counted on two hands, not including himself in that number.
At one point, two years ago, after First Petron, she had been good enough to take the robot nine falls in fifteen at Challenge Rating Eight for a good run of time. Theoretically, it went all the way up to Ten, but she had never met anyone capable of actually beating it at that level.
She had only tried Nine a handful of times, when she was at her very best.
At the time, Jessica had been unwilling to dedicate her entire life to the kind of training regime necessary to maintain that level of skill. She had lost Daneel, and that rage had only fueled her for
so long.
No, be honest, you do spend that much time thinking about it, training for it. But not for the fighting robot. For Karl. For Fribourg. A different kind of hatred, but no less felt.
Jessica smiled to herself. She did work that hard, but it was now on the strategic planning and tactical modeling necessary to win the Eternal War, not just to beat a simple fighting robot.
In that field, she was already at Challenge Rating Nine.
“Combat Mode initiated,” a soothing woman’s voice replied. “Challenge Rating Five confirmed.”
Jessica pushed it all down into the fire diamond in her belly, gripped the stone like death itself, and let her movements become automatic.
Chapter V
Date of the Republic February 17, 396 Brani, Ladaux
“I AM being serious,” Wakely replied, somewhat indignantly. “It will be perfectly safe.”
“Mom, you’re going to be in a war zone,” Thana retorted.
Her daughter couldn’t get too worked up, with a six–month–old boy quietly nursing at one breast, but she could still convey a wealth of emotion with just her tone and her eyes. And stubbornness, but she got all that from her father’s side of the family.
Okafors were all meek and retiring creatures, didn’t you know?
Thana’s living room was small and cozy, with an overstuffed sofa covered in gray where Wakely sat and a century–old wooden rocking chair where Thana held her son Viri, rocking as the little man had his lunch.
“And I will be protected by a huge fleet AND Jessica Keller, Thana,” Wakely said.
They had already gone over this several times. And her eldest was just as stubborn as she was.
Maybe Thana got some of the stubbornness from her mother after all, and not just Torvald.
After all, Dr. Torvald Kijek had his own students to look after, and had taken a phlegmatic approach to her planned, year–long sabbatical into the Empire. There hadn’t been enough time for him to apply for a leave of absence, so he would stay home and watch over the grandkids.
“Mom, it’s Jessica Keller,” Thana said with exasperation. “Isn’t she the boogie–man to these people?”
Technically? Probably. Although they would consider themselves too sophisticated to admit it in public.
Certainly the creature from their worst nightmares. And she was coming for them.
But Wakely had also studied as much as she could of the Fribourg Empire. There were very stringent rules around how the two sides would behave in these circumstances, magnified by the fact that Jessica was involved.
If they managed to drive Jessica Keller off and retake the planet, Wakely Okafor would be operating under long–agreed–upon rules of civilian management. Depending on the circumstances, they might actually leave her in place as a ruling Governor for as much as a year, while they sorted out how they wanted to reorganize things.
Weirder things had happened. Granted, usually it had been a new Imperial overlord installed over an existing Republic government, after a world had fallen. But there were rules.
At worst, a year as a visiting professor on St. Legier while negotiations went on.
And that assumed anyone could defeat Jessica Keller. She could tell her daughter that, but it wouldn’t make any difference. This was her oldest child suddenly without her mother. Wakely had sent her own mother an invite to come for an extended stay on Ladaux to spend time with the grandchildren and great–grands, but Wakely would be gone before her mother arrived.
That was one thing about the military. When they decided to move, there were no extended committee investigations that might wind on for years before a presentation to the Provost.
Decide. Go.
“And she would not be able to do this without me,” Wakely said simply.
Truth.
Jessica was brilliant. Wakely had known that before her very–famous student first set foot in that classroom. Determined in ways that set her apart even from the other Command Centurions who were her peers.
And damaged.
Wakely had read certain reports compiled by the First Lord’s office, spoken with the man himself on two occasions to brief him on the status of his favorite charge. Things she would never tell Jessica, but enough to know what would be safe ground, and how to establish some borders that might help the woman heal, at a time when she might have simply given up and walked away.
Not that Wakely could ever imagine Jessica surrendering to life, but she had seen it in the younger woman’s eyes now and again. Less so, today, but there, nonetheless.
“Guilt?” Thana probed, bringing Wakely suddenly back to the present.
“No, Thana,” she replied. “Opportunity.”
“How so?”
What to tell her very civilian daughter? How to put her mind at rest, with a fussy newborn?
She leaned close, carefully touching foreheads with her eldest.
Things whispered in secrecy.
“It was my idea, child,” she said quietly. “Jessica Keller might be the sword, but I planted that seed. I was the one who suggested to her how it might be done. Showed her where. I should be there to watch that flower bloom.”
“But you’re a civilian, mom.”
“Does that make me any less of a patriot?” Wakely snapped quietly. “Would you like to live in a place like Fribourg, a woman in a man’s world? And let us not forget that they are aristocrats there. You would be gravel beneath the feet of some important Duke or noble, were the roles reversed.”
Things you never even tell your husband.
Thana’s eyes got big.
“You’re serious,” she whispered, carefully adjusting her son to her other breast.
“There was a time, daughter,” Wakely quietly agreed. “I could have gone to the Academy and been a fleet officer instead of going into academia. It would have been a very different life for me. I might have been Jessica Keller, Thana.”
No. There was only one Jessica Keller.
That woman was one in a century. But there could have easily been a Command Centurion Okafor out there today. Possibly even Fleet Lord.
No, Fleet Centurion.
Jessica was going to remake Aquitaine in her own image.
Her co–conspirators should pay attention to the little details if they were going to help her.
Chapter VI
Date of the Republic March 2, 396 Fort Guthrie, Peillon, Ladaux
“Chief,” a man’s voice called as Dashyl leaned on the split–rail fence and stared at the new daystar that had just appeared in the otherwise–empty, eastern afternoon sky. It was quickly growing larger as she watched. Probably wasn’t a good omen. “Do we know when whatever’s supposed to be happening?”
She turned to look at the soldier, her Patrol Decurion, walking towards her across the corral. Tariq Azarola was a tall man, taller than even her own lanky height, and built pretty average for a man, compared to her own skin, bones, wires, and attitude problems. But his black eyes didn’t miss much, which was frequently why they were all still alive.
Dashyl tilted her hat back enough that the sun could sneak past the brim and light up her face as she wiped one hand down to clear some of the dust off of it. Currying her roan mare, Göll, was always a dusty affair. She really wanted a shower right now, but figured that the ship coming in wouldn’t let her.
Instead, she pointed behind him at the light growing brighter.
“Probably,” she said laconically to the man. “Right about now.”
He turned to look over a shoulder, grunted something vaguely obscene, and set his fists on his hips.
“Suppose the Primus Pilus or the Legate knows?” he asked after a moment.
“You volunteering to go tell them, Azarola?” she asked with a tease.
“No, sir, Patrol Centurion,” he grinned back. “That’s stuff for officers. I’m going to go get first in line for dinner. Y’all will have to have a friendly meeting, and be all formal–like for a bit. Hopefully I can get th
e first food, the first shower, and a quick nap before the flag goes up.”
He smiled at her and began to move quickly in the direction of the main barracks.
Patrol Centurion Dashyl Mitja made a face, straightened everything out, and brushed off her uniform as much as she could after a day of hard field exercises, then started to walk the other direction. Fourth Saxon Legion had only been on Ladaux for a little over three weeks. Enough time for the horses to settle and start getting frisky, not so long that her troopers were at risk of doing the same.
Overhead, the first roar of engines as the star began to resolve itself into a DropShip.
That brought her up a little short. First off, people normally came to visit in Administrative Shuttles. Much smaller. Easier to fly. Better equipped. Much more refined for the tastes of Fleet Lords and Legates and Senators.
Second, what fool painted a DropShip bright red?
Ξ
Dash looked around the main briefing room with a hard eye. The newcomers were sure to make life far more interesting than she would have imagined when she got out of bed this morning to muck out stalls with her Patrol.
And the Legate hadn’t chased her off, even if the meeting was really supposed to be for himself and the four Cohort Centurions. She had kind of fallen in with the other group, the strangers, when they landed and then come along with them for the ride.
It wasn’t like she needed sleep that bad. And she might as well get it all from the horse’s mouth.
Plus, the strangers were about as odd a group as she liked to expect.
It was plumb obvious who Fleet Lord Keller was, except she was Fleet Centurion Keller now, according to all the gossip, and had all the important folks in a right lather.
And Dashyl recognized Command Centurion Hường Haukea, commander of the Assault Carrier Abbotsford, the big ship that was kind of Fourth Saxon’s personal taxi these days.
The rest were a mixed bag.
By uniform, the gigantic black guy with a shaved head and a gray van dyke was a fleet marine. High ranking if three stripes meant Command Centurion, like she thought she remembered. Dash was tall for a girl. She might have come up to the guy’s jawbone. And weighed maybe a third of what he did. Monster from a nightmare, with a warm and friendly smile, like he could read minds. Which might have made it worse.
