by Blaze Ward
She hoped.
She turned to Denis Jež, physically present, while many of the rest were projections.
“Present count, Denis?” she asked.
“Fifty–three crew initially rescued,” he replied without checking his notes. “Medbay suggests thirty–four will discharge in two days. Another three in a few weeks. Very little prognosis on the remainder.”
“Thank you.”
Jessica took a moment to say a silent prayer. Dying in battle was one thing. Being blown into deep space without adequate survival gear was something entirely else. Something she wanted to talk to someone about.
In a most unfriendly way.
She turned to the two Imperial officers. Her next words would be public record in both Aquitaine and Fribourg, so she needed to handle this very delicately.
Wakely smiled encouragingly. She had written most of the speech.
“Lt. Walsh and Lt. Koppanen,” she began. “You have struck your colors properly and served your parole with honor. Most of the men rescued from the station are alive because of the efforts of your crews. I will transmit you to Ladaux with a recommendation that you be commended by our own Navy as well as by our Senate for your efforts. I have no doubts that you will be well–kept, and quickly traded home, where I will make sure that the Imperial Fleet receives a record of your activities. Thank you.”
Walsh blushed. Koppanen smiled. Both had apparently expected her to act like a pirate.
She was a Pirate Queen, after all.
Jessica suppressed the smile that threatened to break out.
This was a moment to be dour and taciturn.
“Command Security Centurion,” she said, locating Navin the Black among the projected faces. “Take charge of the prisoners. I would like them to joins us for a formal dinner of Command Centurions before they depart.”
The giant black man nodded once, never one for many words.
“Denis,” she continued. “Pull together prize crews for both vessels and begin the process of familiarization as soon as possible. We’ll continue to use them for inspection duties for the time being, while we work out how to handle the loss of the station.”
Koppanen actually raised his hand.
“You’re keeping them?” he asked in obvious dismay.
“This is an invasion, Lieutenant,” she said flatly. “Not a raid. I plan to be here for a very long time.”
“Oh…” he started to say, when his projection froze.
“Flag, this is Ballard,” a woman’s voice cut through as Enej waved his hand to get her attention.
“Go ahead,” she said, checking that all the other faces appeared active. Only the Imperials had been locked out.
“Flag, we’re picking up explosions on the surface, centered on the port at Yonin,” the woman continued.
It took a moment to place the voice. Senior Centurion Elzbet Aukley, First Officer and Science Officer aboard Ballard.
Almost as good as Tomas Kigali.
“Somebody just blew up that ore freighter that was landing when we first crashed the party,” she said. “Major damage to the port. Secondary explosions as well.”
Jessica watched her lovely plan continue to evaporate in front of her eyes.
So much for planetary surrender under force majeure. Peaceful occupation as she started the task of undermining the entire Imperial Edifice from this peaceful, irrelevant speck of a planet.
“Navin and Denis, get the cutters in hand immediately,” she ordered, shifting gears quickly. “Haukea and Zviadi, I need Fourth Saxon and LVIII Heavy on the ground now. Stitch Yonin up as fast as you can before they do anything else crazy or stupid down there. Wakely, you’ll be governor as soon as I get those idiots to stop shooting, but I’m going down with you to get their attention.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea, Margrave?” Wakely replied, implying that all of this would be played back for the Senate at some point, hopefully not at another Court Martial.
“No, I do not,” Jessica replied. “But we have to kill or isolate as many of the dead–enders as we can. And we have to do it quickly. Most of the people down there just want to keep working and drawing a paycheck. Right now, we’re firefighters.”
No plan survives contact with the enemy. That was why he was the enemy.
But she’d be damned if she was going to let his plan work, either.
Chapter XIV
Date of the Republic April 30, 396 Yonin, Thuringwell
LVIII Heavy was the sledgehammer field commanders used when everything else failed.
Cohort Centurion Rebekah Kim knew that. Lived it.
Thrived on it.
She didn’t really appreciate being detached from the Ninth Pohang Legion, but it was a fact of life in the modern Army. Every legion had four anchor cohorts, plus headquarters, and each one of those units was regularly rotated around to serve with other units as missions and needs evolved.
So here she was on Thuringwell, getting ready to wipe the lazy asses of Fourth Saxon. At least she would be able to do the job her way today, and not wait for them to get around to maybe riding out on their silly horses and finding the bad guys.
After all, there was no rain to stop them.
The ramp on the DropShip slammed down with a terrible ringing. The crew, and especially the loadmaster, had learned not to take their time getting things pretty when dealing with Cohort Centurion Kim.
She smiled harshly.
“Move out,” she called, but her driver was already ahead of her, engines roaring and transmission screaming as the big beast known as Freefall lurched into motion and down the ramp.
It was an old nickname. As a rookie Patrol Centurion, she had once driven her tank off a ramp that had frozen halfway down, partly in an attempt to dislodge it, partly because she wasn’t about to lose points on an exercise due to someone else’s equipment failure. Tanks could easily drop at least their own length, with a very good chance of surviving.
She could testify to that.
Today, Freefall ran down ramp like an angry avalanche.
Horses might out–accelerate her, for maybe the first thirty meters, but they couldn’t reach one hundred kph on a flat surface. Nor hold it for an hour, shooting every step of the way.
Freefall could.
Rebekah checked her command readout. Behind her, the rest of her team was moving. This DropShip was crammed tight, with the three tanks of 1–1–1, First Lance/First Squadron/First Patrol, plus the three tracked vehicles of First Patrol’s Support Lance. But everyone was in motion.
Rebekah checked the map display against the map in her head and the recent scans of the starport. Auberon didn’t carry as much infantry on this mission, most of her space being given over to a full Construction Ala, but Keller had already put an entire rapid–deployment fireteam down in various locations around the west side of the port, where they could cut off traffic to the city and hopefully keep the saboteurs isolated.
There had been two more explosions on the ground before all the local ships had taken off like their tails were on fire. Sky–side, they were Keller’s problem. Locally, they were nobody’s problem unless they looked like they were about to start a strafing run on her.
Then they would discover what the particle cannons could do. The hard way.
“LVIII Heavy, this is the Flag,” Keller’s voice came over the comm.
“Go ahead,” Rebekah replied.
This was always when the Fleet Lords took it upon themselves to meddle in things they didn’t understand, like mud and rain. Why should Keller be any different?
“Kim, Auberon’s marines intercepted a local force after they dropped,” Keller continued. “That force was headed towards the port, and heavily armed.”
Rebekah’s readouts suddenly filled with images of a convoy of men in big trucks. They weren’t wearing blue Imperial Army uniforms, but gray.
Imperial Security.
Bullies with guns.
The montage was
fast. Lightly armored trucks with pintle–mounted heavy weapons running headlong into a barrage of anti–tank rockets and ground fire from a small group of Republic marines that had gotten there first and dug in.
It was brief, harsh, and deadly, and then the Imperials fell back and scattered into the sidestreets.
“What are your orders, Flag?” Rebekah said as she digested the technical specifications that went with the footage. Counts, gear, directions, theories.
“My marines have the cork in the bottle, Kim,” the Fleet Centurion replied. “Fourth Saxon’s dropping around the perimeter of the port and pushing inward rapidly to control the situation and protect local fire and rescue efforts. I want you to pivot into the city and drive those bastards hard in front of you. They have very little weaponry that can take on heavy armor.”
Rebekah waited for the other shoe to drop.
“That’s it?” she blurted after a second. “Sir.”
“That’s it, LVIII. Find them, fix them. Kill them if necessary. I need the city pacified. Now.”
Rebekah smiled. No silly orders about not damaging buildings, not hurting civilians, not disrupting anyone’s High Tea. Just get in and crack skulls together.
She might like working for this Keller.
“First Support Lance, laager here and wait for instructions,” Kim said into her comm. “This might be our starting point for anchor bases.”
Behind her, three of the vehicles began to pull off the road, probably planning to backtrack a little to that park they had passed, and set up shop: a Recovery tank, a Logistics tank, and an Air Defense behemoth with twin autocannons and several tons of ammunition.
“StealthLlama, Geulipon, and Nun, form on Freefall and unlock all weapons. If it waves, smile. If it shoots, shoot back. We’re going hunting.”
Ξ
Rebekah found herself pretending to be the local sheriff, which was absolutely bizarre on an otherwise–Imperial planet. She had to work not to giggle at the image in her head.
Yonin was a typical small city. Population about seventy–five thousand, mostly geared towards either the central planetary government, what they needed of such a thing, or supporting the port. Keller had said that everything was pretty much trucked in from somewhere else.
And things had gotten eerily quiet.
There were still explosions behind her, in the port. Someone had set fire to a row of warehouses, but Fourth Saxon and the fire department had it mostly under control by now.
Freefall rumbled down the center of a major boulevard that was otherwise empty. There weren’t many private vehicles on Thuringwell to begin with, from the intelligence reports, and all business traffic had come to an absolute halt, except for emergency vehicles trying to help, and the occasional something running like hell in the distance.
The latter she had let go. Anything in line of sight could be hit with the particle cannon, but people running away from her weren’t a threat.
There weren’t many threats to heavy armor. Not on this planet.
Movement caught her eye.
Rebekah dialed in the scanners.
A man, standing in the middle of the street, waving both hands over his head to get her attention.
Older, maybe mid–fifties. Dark skin. Not quite dark enough to be a Zanzibar native. Maybe closer to Ballard. Probably some planetary equivalent on this side of the border.
Dressed in a business suit and very expensive shoes. Totally out of place in the middle of a potential warzone.
“Team, hold here,” Rebekah said into the comm. “Freefall will scout.”
Behind her, the other three vehicles would spread out and pivot to watch the flanks, StealthLlama in dark gray paint like a giant rock, Geulipon, Korean for Gryphon, wearing all brown, and Nun, the Korean word for Snow, looking like a giant Dalmatian in white and gray splatter camouflage.
Freefall came down to a walk. She had a good team.
“Hold at one hundred, Choe,” she ordered.
In one of her screens, she saw her driver nod as he maneuvered the big beast.
Rebekah let Soun, her gunner, line the big cannon up with the civilian. There was a co–axial light autocannon, in case she needed it. Against an unarmed, middle–aged man in the middle of the street.
Right.
Rebekah flipped a switch and activated the public address system.
“LVIII Heavy Ala, Grand Army of the Republic,” she said with a grin, like a waitress taking an order at a restaurant. “How can I help you today?”
Seriously, who could see her in the services industry?
The man flinched under the bombardment of sound. He pursed his lips and took a deep breath.
“Speak normally, I can hear you from there.”
Another flinch. He looked like an insurance salesman.
“Imperial Security troops have taken over the Hall of Government,” he said, mostly in a conversational voice, as if he frequently had conversations with armoured land whales. “They have barricaded themselves in and begun to shoot randomly out of windows and set fires.”
Yup. Dead–enders. The smart ones were in trucks and flats right now, running like hell for the edge of town, where they could fade into the brush. Rebekah didn’t figure that many of them would be able to just take off their uniforms and pretend to be civilians.
Imperial Army, maybe, not Imperial Security Bureau. Nobody liked those bastards.
“Hostages?”
“It is the Sabbath, madame,” he replied, just a touch indignant. “Perhaps a few custodians were working. The rest would be Imperial Security troops guarding the building.”
“Who are you?” Rebekah asked harshly.
She wasn’t really listening. Soun had the big guns lined up for an ambush. Rebekah was watching the scanners for someone to jump out with a missile.
“Miles Gunderson,” he replied.
Rebekah blinked in surprise. What was the mayor of Yonin doing here?
She called up the briefing files and compared pictures. Sure enough.
Huh.
Probably useful to have him in hand, right about now.
“Choe,” she said on an interior channel. “Close up and pass him on our right.”
“Got it,” her driver replied as he pushed the tank into motion smoothly. Like a walrus on fresh pack ice.
Rebekah dialed down the speakers as she got closer. No reason to blast him deaf.
Today.
“Mr. Mayor,” she said formally over the outside speakers. “I think it would be useful for everyone involved if you joined me and showed us where these people are.”
She popped the hatch and surfaced with a pistol in one hand, about as far from Botticelli as you could get.
Nobody jumped out at her.
The mayor was a tall man. Dignified.
Rebekah climbed down onto the front fender to give him a hand up as the tank came to a halt.
Well, lift him bodily. He was skinnier than he looked and she was a lot stronger.
He had a look of surprise when he got to his feet atop the tank.
“Why is there Republic armor landing on an Imperial Planet, madam?” he inquired sternly.
“It’s not an Imperial world anymore, Gunderson,” she replied flatly. “It’s my world. Now, let’s go see about your juvenile delinquents.”
Ξ
“Flag, this is Freefall,” Jessica heard Cohort Centurion Kim’s voice come over the command channel.
“Go ahead, Kim,” she replied almost immediately.
Jessica had never monitored a land battle from her Flag Bridge, safely in orbit. She was almost fidgeting with energy, with nothing to do about it.
She made a note to go have another good session with the fighting robot later.
“Bad just got worse, Flag,” Rebekah said.
Jessica suppressed another flinch. Her fingers barely moved.
A screen lit up with an image of an impressive, granite building overlooking a large plaza. Windows had been s
hattered out. Three land vehicles were burning. As were a pair of flitters.
At least one of them had been moving when someone killed it. Parts were scattered across a corner and had shattered the façade of another building next door.
As Jessica watched, someone popped out from cover and opened fire with an energy rifle in the camera’s general direction, before disappearing under cover.
“What’s the problem, Kim?” Jessica asked, surprised that LVIII hadn’t raked the building with their big guns.
You didn’t negotiate with terrorists and snipers. You hit them with a big hammer. Rebekah Kim, for example.
A new feed came through, live. The same building, from farther back. The tank closest to the mess was the one called Snow. Nun.
At least four men were taking useless potshots at the tanks, as if goading them to shoot back. Others had apparently set fires, causing a haze of smoke to ooze out of shattered windows on the ground floor and from the eighth story roof.
Jessica hated fanatics.
“That’s the Hall of Government for Thuringwell, Flag,” Kim replied.
Ah.
Jessica checked the coordinates Kim was transmitting.
“And I have someone here who wants to talk to you, Fleet Centurion,” Kim continued. “Go ahead.”
Jessica watched the camera view swap to show Cohort Centurion Kim and a civilian, her standing up out of her hatch and him crouched behind the turret.
“Fleet Lord Keller, my name is Miles Gunderson,” the man said with grand dignity. “I am the Mayor of the city you are destroying.”
Wakely’s head came all the way around from whatever she had been doing to stare at the projection.
Jessica glanced in Wakely’s direction, got a nod in return.
“My troops aren’t setting fires or shooting down civilian transports, Sri Gunderson,” Jessica replied.
Briefly, she considered dropping a fireteam of marines on the roof to clear the place. The costs would probably be tremendous. Probably not worth it.
Yet.
“If you attack that building,” Gunderson said. “You risk destroying all the paper records for the entire colony, Keller. Tax Records. Land Titles. Court Documents.”
