Goddess of War (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 4)

by Blaze Ward

  The words were so wrong–headed that Alber’ had a hard time making sense of them.

  “Do you ever get tired of flying experimental warships, d’Maine?” Fleet Centurion Keller asked him, as they stood on the bridge of RAN Shivaji. The prototype for a prospective whole new class of warships.

  His bridge.

  And possibly the most dangerous warship in the fleet. Not just kilo for kilo, either.

  Take a Founder Class Heavy Cruiser. Strip out the missile racks and storage. Fill all that sudden emptiness with auxiliary generators and batteries. Lots of them. Mount a turret midship, like a frog sitting on a crocodile.

  Fill said turret with a twin Type–4 mount.

  Station–class weaponry. An order of magnitude bigger than the Type–3’s and bigger than the Primaries. Greater range and ferocity than anything else that moved, except Mobile Defense Platforms.

  Alber’ looked over at his commander. He understood that she was a warrior in the pure sense, but some days she obviously just did not get him.

  With the heavy destroyer Rajput, he had killed a light cruiser in single combat. Shivaji might be able to duel with a battleship. He looked forward to the chance.

  “Never,” he settled for, unwilling to insult the woman who helped him commit his deadly art in space.

  She nodded up at him with a knowing grin.

  Up?

  It was always odd to realize how small Fleet Centurion Keller was in person. In height, merely average for a woman.

  Alber’ was a little below average for a man, and much broader, but she still barely came up to his eyes in person.

  In his mind, she was always so much bigger, grander. One of the Norse Giantesses that the gods fell in love with in all the stories. A force of nature, perhaps, more than a person.

  And not his type at all. But then, he didn’t have a type.

  He had an obsession.

  Alber’ knew that RAN folks whispered stories about Fleet Centurion Keller. At least those who didn’t know.

  Alber’ knew the truth. Knew that underneath the stories and legend was a woman who was still mostly human.

  At one time, he had probably been human as well, but Alber’ had given up trying to be normal a very long time ago.

  The person closest to actually understanding him was probably Tomas Kigali. That man understood what a Vow of Excellence was, what it meant.

  What it cost.

  For Kigali, feats of navigation that made the history books.

  For Alber’, warfare.

  If he followed any Siren, it would probably be Otrera, Goddess of War, and not one of the softer, weaker deities.

  Mere moments had passed. Fleet Centurion Keller was studying his face, possibly reading his soul.

  She was rumored to have that power.

  “Simeon,” she said simply, referencing a planetary system, but more importantly, a state of mind. An important shorthand among Command Centurions.

  The Navy’s primary training facility. Capable of handling everything from the smallest Extended Range Patrol Vessels up to full battle fleets.

  “Lane Seven?” he asked, trying to suppress the hope in his voice.

  Shivaji had run Lane Three several times when they were working out how to best handle a vessel with such extreme range and far less close–in firepower. It had been an interesting test, evaluating all the theories and then adjusting them for reality. And a good test for as much of his old crew from Rajput as he had been able to bring with him.

  Silly Naval Architects tended to be far too conservative in their estimates. Yet another reason to bring warriors.

  Fleet Centurion Keller did smile this time.

  “Yes, Alber’,” she said. “Lane Seven. Double arrowhead on the destroyers. Nyamboya, then Shivaji, then Auberon, with Ishfahan and Ballard on the rear flanks.”

  Something sour must have shown in his face.

  Keller didn’t speak. Just raised an eyebrow at him, like a teacher waiting for an apt pupil to speak up.

  “A third arrowhead would be more effective,” Alber’ said quietly. “Put Ishfahan, with all those missile racks, on the hot corner up front as a shield, and Ballard, with her sensor suite and defensive guns, on the other side. Shivaji trailing a battlecruiser like Nyamboya will range on a single target at the same time, which nobody will be expecting. Three of the destroyers are Escort Carriers. Nine fighters there, plus Auberon’s eighteen and the heavy wing. Plus all the GunShips we have. Plus Gaucho. Tsunami.”

  “Most of the commanders in the Navy would also send the flight wings down a different Lane for training,” Keller proposed. It sounded like a test.

  “There won’t be separate battles at Thuringwell, Fleet Centurion,” Alber’ observed quietly.

  “No there won’t,” Keller agreed with a sure nod. “If we’re lucky, there won’t be anything heavier than a corvette.”

  “On the contrary, Fleet Centurion,” he said with a feral smile. “If we’re lucky, there will be an entire Imperial battle squadron there that’s just big enough to think they can stop us.”

  Chapter IX

  Date of the Republic April 1, 396 SC Auberon. Simeon System

  The old Auberon hadn’t had the sorts of true Flag facilities to host a proper event like this. But she had been a Strike Carrier, modified up from a Heavy Cruiser hull to use every cubic centimeter of interior space for the flight wing.

  For Jessica, that was one of the most interesting parts of this new Auberon.

  This mammoth ship, this beast, was a Star Controller. A monster of a ship. All of a Dreadnaught’s guns and shields. All of a Fleet Carrier’s Flight Wing capacity. They were the biggest warships in space by sheer enclosed volume. The Fribourg Empire had never built anything to this scale, preferring to spend their time on mere battleships instead.

  Lane Seven had been just as much excitement and fuck–up as she had been expecting, with a whole new team of ships and crews that had never worked together before.

  Still, that was why she’d ordered that run. To learn.

  They would run it again tomorrow, and the results would be better. Or else.

  Jessica looked over the crowd of people standing around with wineglasses, nearly filling the grand ballroom, and smiled. Most Fleet Lords would have only invited the nineteen Command Centurions to something like a cocktail party, putting them together as a group so they could let their hair down and chat as elite peers.

  As a Fleet Centurion, she had specifically limited the invitation to the number of people that could fit onto a single administrative shuttle. And Kigali had apparently been pushing the envelope on the life support rating of his, to see people keep emerging from it like some sort of clown car.

  Jessica smiled internally.

  Lane Seven was programmed to be a bitch. She needed Kigali.

  And she was very, very happy that Kigali had refused to let himself be promoted out of CR–264. Not just because she had won a bet with Calina. Having the little escort in front of her today, as always, like the horn on a unicorn, had kept them from being hit at least four times, any of them hard enough to have been crippling.

  First Lord had tried to promote Tomas Kigali to a bigger vessel, several times. Jessica had to give Nils credit for tenacity. His mistake had been trying to offer the man a Survey Cruiser like Ballard. She might be brand new, and certainly capable of the sorts of sailing and navigation feats that CR–264 was famous for, but she had one problem.

  “Survey Cruisers don’t kill things,” Kigali has apparently stated flatly, almost rudely, when interviewed informally on the topic by the First Lord, followed by a raft of profanities Kigali had picked up on various planets along the way.

  Command Centurion Haukea had taken a very liberal interpretation of the invitation as well, flying sixty folks over in one of her DropShips instead of an administrative shuttle. Still, that meant all of the centurions from Fourth Saxon were here, mingling with tankers from LVIII Heavy, Wolanski’s Construction
teams, and a mess of RAN crew and pilots.

  At least Jessica had warned the mess hall to expect locusts.

  Jessica took the last sip of wine from her glass and nodded to Enej Zivkovic, her Flag Centurion, standing close by.

  He smiled back and put his thumb and middle finger in his mouth. Jessica had never learned how to make a sound like an air–raid siren with her mouth. She didn’t need to. Not with Enej around.

  The room fell to stillness quickly, followed by the rustling of cloth as everyone tuned to face her.

  How many Fleet Lords did she know who would spend twenty minutes making speeches right now, working themselves and their command centurions up into a false lather of excitement?

  That wasn’t her style. The mob in front of her had gotten thirty minutes of mixing and drinks under their belts already. The cooks had made good use of the extra time.

  She pointed at double doors opening in the far wall.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” she called. “The buffet has been prepared. The Chief of the Wardroom has assigned seating randomly, and there will be briefing packets, waterproofed, on the tables, waiting for you.”

  That got a laugh. Working dinners were common in the Republic of Aquitaine Navy, and notoriously messy.

  “Our target is the Imperial planet of Thuringwell,” Jessica continued. “This is not a hit and run raid, but a full invasion with the intent to hold the planet for an extended period of time. Possibly forever. Operation Harbinger. We’ll do Q&A after dessert.”

  Navin the Black took charge at this point. It might be her party, but it was his house. And nobody was going to argue much with that man, except maybe Moirrey.

  Jessica would put her money on the female engineer in that conflict.

  Quickly, the crowd turned and began to move away from her, like a bathtub where the plug has been pulled.

  Jessica took a deep breath.

  She had spent over a year planning this project. And she’d had help from experts like Wakely and a host of Navy Librarians too big to name.

  Now she was going to turn it over to a mob of cowgirls and tankers, and let them figure out how to execute it.

  She finally understood why Nils’s hair had gone white.

  Ξ

  “Why Thuringwell?” a voice asked from one of the tables to her right.

  Jessica turned that direction, trying to pick out the speaker from a mob of faces, some of which she knew, most of which were newcomers.

  Centurion Mitja halfway raised her hand to take credit for the question. She looked a little nervous.

  Still, it was a good question. And it was better than some of them she might have expected with a group this large and diverse.

  Things like: Are you nuts? Invade an entire planet?

  What the hell good do you think horses will be, anyway?

  And is the fleet going to abandon us if somebody screws up?

  All of those were likely questions, but perhaps not something someone would just yell out in this setting.

  Maybe.

  But the Patrol Centurion had gotten to heart of the matter.

  Why Thuringwell? Why not someplace more interesting, more useful, more central? More militarily relevant?

  “The list is as long as my arm, Dashyl,” Jessica replied, making it more personal and informal by treating it as a conversation between Centurions. “But let me share a couple of them with everyone.”

  She took a sip of juice from her glass to settle her thoughts. The campaign would hinge on these people understanding what the stakes were. On them being able to execute on all the things she hadn’t been able to foresee.

  “Until recently, the top Imperial Admiral facing us was Emmerich Wachturm,” Jessica began. “A cousin of the Emperor, and a brilliant strategist. I lost to him once, beat him once, and fought him to a draw at Ballard.”

  “A draw?” Dashyl asked, obviously confused.

  “Draw,” Jessica reiterated. “He set out to destroy Alexandria Station and kill Suvi. It was also a trap designed to kill me.”

  Jessica let that settle in. The latter wasn’t widely known. Spies didn’t like coming into the sunlight.

  “He destroyed the station, as you know,” Jessica continued after a moment. “He did not kill Suvi. He did cause the loss of the Strike Carrier Auberon and the Heavy Destroyer Rajput. Neither Alber’ d’Maine nor I were killed, but both vessels did suffer serious casualties, men and women who were friends and comrades.”

  Again, a moment of silence. The rest of the room hung on her words, a trick Nils had taught her in phrasing and intonation.

  The voice of leadership.

  “The real reason Wachturm went to Ballard was to attack the psychological foundation of the Republic,” Jessica stated. “Baudin started out there, on the Story Road, before he went on to found the Republic of Aquitaine.”

  Dashyl nodded at her, but did not speak. Those were history lessons every girl learned in school.

  “So, why Thuringwell?” Jessica let her gaze wander the room, marking Alber’, Denis, Robbie, and Tomas from their spots around the grand space. “At Ballard, it was good for the goose. It will be good for the gander.”

  Again, silence. More stunned confusion than anything. They had expected military rationalizations, perhaps. The effect on the Fribourg Empire from losing an entire planet that seemed to exist as a company town producing raw ores for ship–building. The psychological blow from a strike into Imperial territory by Aquitaine’s demonic woman commander, facing down an entire Empire of men.

  No. This went deeper.

  “The Fribourg Empire is an inherited aristocracy of birth,” Jessica said firmly, repeating the first words out of Wakely’s mouth in that very first lecture, so long ago.

  Jessica smiled at Wakely, seated in a back corner with Vo Arlo on one side and Rebekah Kim beyond that. Wakely grinned at her and nodded back, recognizing the words.

  “Men lead because they were born as the Duke of the planet, not because they were raised up on the shoulders and support of their fellow citizens, as we do it,” Jessica continued, repeating the lecture she had recorded and listened to so many times.

  “Not all Imperial worlds are happy citizens of the greater body politic,” she said, again drawing the conversation intimate with Dashyl, and the nearly–two–hundred eavesdroppers listening in. “Especially if you have absentee landlords, unscrupulous financiers, and a population heavily tilted towards men with little chance of being long–term colonists, men who are exploited workers struggling to make enough money to control their own destinies.”

  “Rebellion?” Dashyl asked, giving voice to the rest of the folks who didn’t dare interrupt.

  “It would never work, Dash,” Jessica replied. “Once we left, the Imperial Security Bureau would just round up all the troublemakers and shoot them. Instead, we’re going to convince them to join the Republic of their own free will.”

  “How?”

  “We’re going to put them in charge of things,” Jessica stated. “Let them run the planet as owners, and not as serfs.”

  “But what good will that do?” another voice called from her left. Enfys El–Amin, Wombat’s Command Centurion.

  Jessica didn’t bother to look at the woman asking. Dashyl would have asked the same question a beat later.

  “What happens if all Imperial worlds suddenly demanded a say in how things are run? If they were no longer happy to be merely ruled, but wanted to participate in the decision–making process?” Jessica asked, turning and looking at all of her commanders, her warriors, her comrades.

  “The Empire would come apart at the seams,” Enfys El–Amin replied forcefully.

  She was the Command Centurion of RAN Wombat, a specialist minesweeper Jessica had brought along with her Support Force. The ship could also lay mines, an almost–invisible web of deadly surprises she could weave in the skies above Thuringwell, for when the Imperials made their attempt.

  That Command Centurion was a quie
t woman. A craftsman intent on a very delicate task that required care and precision. She was a plain–looking woman, if you were to meet her on the street. Nothing would strike your memory, except perhaps the way she moved. Slow and deliberate. Nothing interesting, unless you spoke with her, perhaps over coffee.

  Then her words would register.

  Enfys El–Amin never put a syllable wrong, like she never put a domino wrong. Jessica could imagine this woman building one of those giant domino runs, small colored tiles, one by four by nine, that you then knocked over and watched them tip the next in line, and the one after, in complicated sequences, like Rube Goldberg machines. Moving artwork.

  You could not make a mistake in that game, either, unless you wanted to start completely from scratch after all the tiles had finished falling over.

  “If it does, El–Amin,” Jessica replied, fixing her with a stare. “Then the Eternal War is over. We’ll have won.”

  The room gasped as the implications of her words sunk in. There were a few, like d’Maine, who might miss a lifetime of warfare, but there were thousands of worlds full of people who would live better lives, not looking constantly over their shoulders for the war to land in their backyard.

  Now Jessica just had to pull it off.

  If she could.

  Chapter X

  Date of the Republic April 28, 396 SC Auberon. Edge of Thuringwell System

  Jessica took a deep breath as the countdown edged to zero.

  For just a moment, she was suddenly back on the Flag Bridge of the old CVS Auberon, getting ready for that first raid on 2218 Svati Prime, backed by nothing but Rajput and CR–264, and her own belief that she could whack the Empire and Emperor in the shins with a long stick, desperately out of scope with the actual amount of damage she intended to do.

  Surprise occurs in the enemy commander’s mind.

  She wondered what the poor unfortunate soul at the other end was going to think about today.

  Jessica wasn’t sure that surprise was a large enough word to encompass what was about to drop into his lap.

  The last hop had been short, barely two light years out from an otherwise irrelevant system that existed more as a navigation hazard in JumpSpace than anything else. Get everyone organized and primed. Dinner. Potty breaks. Fresh coffee.