Goddess of War (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 4)

by Blaze Ward

  Vo dismounted and handed his reins to Hult. It put him down on their level, instead of towering over them. Plus, he could move faster if he needed to.

  Let the rest be centaurs.

  He took a few steps closer.

  The man with the most stripes, both on his forearm and upper arm, got a hard look on his face.

  Oh, what the hell.

  Vo’d actually studied the right textbooks for this. Recently, too.

  “My name is Centurion Vo Arlo,” he said, gesturing around him. “This is the Fourth Saxon Legion, Grand Army of the Republic of Aquitaine, and this planet has been placed under martial law under the recognized Rules of Warfare.”

  Several seconds of silence.

  At least nobody shot at him.

  Vo figured the best thing to do would be to stand very still and drop to the ground, considering the amount of fire that Patrol Squadron was likely to pour into this area if they decided to.

  Sergeant. That was the rank the guy had. Master Sergeant, maybe, if Vo was counting the stripes right.

  “So?” the Master Sergeant said after a few seconds.

  It wasn’t rude, or angry, or anything. Just a statement of fact.

  Hard man.

  Vo liked him immediately.

  “So my job is to politely round you up, disarm you and your troops, and send you off to a camp where they’ll eventually trade you home.”

  Master Sergeant considered the words for several seconds.

  “No,” he said.

  Again, not angry, not sneering.

  Just not giving a shit.

  “I beg your pardon?” Vo asked.

  This had not been covered in the Rules of Warfare classes. Everybody played nice. Wars were fought in space, not on planets.

  Of course, you raided planets. Nobody actually invaded them.

  Until today.

  Master Sergeant gestured to the big stone thingee behind him.

  “We are under orders from the Emperor himself to provide a permanent Honor Guard for the Division Colors,” Master Sergeant replied simply. Cold. Hard. Honest.

  Silence.

  “Which Emperor?” Charpentier spoke up suddenly.

  Vo glanced back at the man on the horse behind him, and the Cohort’s flag on the spear’s cross bar.

  Master Sergeant looked over as well, studying the Draconarius closely for several seconds before he spoke.

  Vo sensed a kinship between those two men. Veterans entrusted with the Colors.

  “Karl the Fourth,” Master Sergeant replied after a moment.

  Karl IV? Really? They’ve been here for eighty–something years, doing this?

  Vo made a note to look up the unit when he got back to a library. Something impressive must have happened, back then.

  “You may have invaded Thuringwell, Centurion,” Master Sergeant growled at him. “You will not prevent us from doing our duty.”

  Seriously, Vo was surprised that nobody opened fire on the Imperials at that point. In the movies, that was when the music suddenly got ominous. And he knew there was somebody over yonder with the Narwhal, listening.

  It was a lovely tool, the Narwhal. A passive sensor package you put on a telescoping flagpole and stuck in the air. Emitted no radiation signatures for anyone else to track, but could listen on conversations a ways away, in addition to sensors: optical, radio, and a number of interesting frequencies.

  Patrol Squadron knew what the guy said just as well has Vo did. The Cataphracti were probably also dialed on the audio as well.

  Four of them in Imperial Blue were gonna take on a lance of tanks and a full squadron of cavalry, in an open field, with rifles.

  This Imperial had brass.

  And it was going to get him killed.

  Vo could smell trigger fingers getting twitchy. His were.

  “And you will not surrender and be disarmed?” Vo asked.

  Things were formal at this point. Like, explaining in a Court Martial to a group of Legates and Fleet Lords formal, why he had slaughtered these men.

  Them being assholes wasn’t going to be a particularly useful defense. Regardless of how accurate it might be.

  “Never, Centurion,” Master Sergeant stated.

  At least none of the four Imperials reached for his rifle. Three seconds later, there wouldn’t be enough pieces left to bury, if they did that.

  Everybody seemed to understand that.

  Stalemate.

  Unless…

  “What was your exact commission, Master Sergeant?” Vo asked carefully.

  His brain had gone sideways. This was probably one of the reasons Navin the Black and the Fleet Centurion had picked him for this job.

  Master Sergeant picked up on it. He probably didn’t want to die today, either. Nobody really did.

  “Karl the Fourth ordered the 189th Division to maintain a permanent, armed, Guard of Honor here,” the man said carefully. “To protect the Division Colors.”

  Vo nodded slowly. Not a lot of wiggle room there. For a barracks lawyer.

  Street punk from Anameleck Prime thought different.

  “Armed?” he asked carefully.

  Vo could see a wedge of daylight.

  Master Sergeant nodded, just as carefully.

  Vo could tell the man expected Vo’s next words to be his death sentence.

  He had brass.

  “Nothing about rifles,” Vo said, equally carefully, negotiating mentally with this total stranger. “What about swords?”

  Master Sergeant blinked.

  He blinked again.

  “Uhm, no,” the man said finally, utterly at a loss.

  Good. Maybe nobody had to be splattered today.

  “Master Sergeant…What is your name, anyway?” Vo asked

  “Master Sergeant Edgar Horst,” the man replied, puffing his chest a little. “Color Sergeant for the 189th Division.”

  “Master Sergeant Horst,” Vo continued. “I cannot leave you and your men armed with rifles during this invasion. Would honor be satisfied if you stood your watch bearing swords instead?”

  Master Sergeant blinked again.

  Good. Anything to get through the man’s iron hide.

  Horst nodded slowly.

  “Good,” Vo said.

  He reached down and unlatched his saber from his belt and turned to the other three.

  “Gimme yours, too,” he said with a cheerful smile.

  Dash looked at him like he’d lost his mind. Hult wasn’t much better. Charpentier grinned at him and grabbed his with the hand not holding the spear.

  The two girls relented and surrendered theirs a moment later.

  Vo turned back to the Master Sergeant, carrying four of Fourth Saxon’s cavalry sabers in scabbards like he would a baby.

  “Hult, tell everyone not to do anything stupid, please?” Vo asked breezily.

  She nodded and started talking into a sound–deadening mic.

  Master Sergeant nodded as Vo got close.

  “Color Guard,” he ordered loudly. “Stack Arms.”

  These man handled the task with the serious professionalism of a performance troop. The outer two left their corner posts in perfect cadence and marched to the fore. All four men came together at the center and grounded their rifles into a little triangle thingee that left them standing outright, leaning on each other like a house of cards.

  Or a squad of men relying on each other to survive.

  Master Sergeant first, followed by the others, each stepped forward, took a saber, and clipped it to his belt.

  They returned to their posts, two on the corners, two facing him.

  “Now what, Centurion Arlo?” Horst asked finally.

  “Now, you make sure your team understands what the rules are, Master Sergeant,” Vo said. “No guns, and nobody has to get shot. We’ll make sure the troops assigned to this district know what’s going on and to leave you alone.”

  Vo could hear the sound of nearly a hundred horses suddenly lurching i
nto motion and coming this way, plus that scream a tank’s transmission makes when you slam the sticks to the forward stops.

  “No,” Horst said, gesturing to the avalanche of military superiority coming towards him. “What is all this?”

  “An invasion.”

  “No,” Master Sergeant said. “Seriously.”

  “Seriously, Master Sergeant,” Vo smiled back at him. “The Republic of Aquitaine has invaded Thuringwell and we’re keeping this planet.”

  “Are you insane, Centurion?”

  Vo gestured to the man, the sabers, the stack of rifles next to his foot, and the racing tide of troops coming over.

  He grinned.

  “Yup.”

  “Oh,” Master Sergeant said.

  Chapter XVI

  Imperial Founding: 174/05/02. Thuringwell Wilderness

  “Rest period is over,” Dieter announced, looking around the clearing.

  Twenty–three men came alive and stood up.

  All but two of them were taller than Dieter. Big men. Well–honed violence.

  The two small ones were probably the most dangerous ones here, relying on brains instead of using their brawn. Well, second and third most dangerous.

  Dieter smiled cruelly.

  “Sergeant Stoltberg,” he called. “Contact the other teams and remind them that we are still on schedule to rendezvous in two days.”

  He waited long enough for the man to nod, then picked up his heavy backpack and slung it across his shoulders. The others might think they were tough. Dieter set out at a pace that would probably leave most of them gasping in another hour.

  “All teams confirm, Colonel Haussmann,” Stoltberg responded a few minutes later. “Team Six is behind schedule because they believe they were spotted by Republic troops and are moving off path to distract them and try to draw them into an ambush.”

  Dieter grunted noncommittally.

  The original plan had called for only six of the ten teams to be able to coalesce in the deep woods after five days. Three hundred men.

  Right now, he looked to have closer to five hundred men, armed to the teeth when they arrived at the secret weapons cache established several years ago in an unmarked valley.

  With that much force, he could wreak untold damage on the invaders.

  For a moment, Dieter regretted not having any personal transports, but that would have just led the Republic to his bolthole.

  Better this way. Plus, these men needed toughening up. Garrison duty had left the rest of them so slack that a forty–seven–year–old desk officer was marching them into the ground.

  As it should be.

  Chapter XVII

  Date of the Republic May 3, 396 Yonin, Thuringwell

  “It could be worse,” Wakely heard Jessica venture brightly over the hum of the DropShip’s engines.

  Wakely wasn’t sure how.

  The view below was hideous.

  Starports were always supposed to be pretty places. Well organized.

  Clean.

  Yonin’s was oversized for the planetary population, but that was because the place catered to a group of massive heavy freighters that hauled ore off–world on a regular schedule. And hauled in almost all the consumables needed.

  Wakely traced the line of parallel railroad tracks that disappeared over the horizon.

  Below the DropShip, those tracks vanished into a pile of rubble and bits.

  The engineers had agreed that someone had sabotaged the engines of the monstrous freighter, almost three kilometer long and nearly half that wide. At least they had done it on the ground, so the ship had just exploded, throwing fiery wreckage everywhere, instead of when it was in the air and it would crash into the ground or the city like a meteor.

  Even then, the experts had assured her, they could have the damage fixed in under a week.

  The people would take longer.

  Wakely turned to look at Jessica, hovering close.

  “What does this do to the plan?” she asked.

  Jessica shrugged.

  They were functionally alone. Everyone else was conspicuously watching other screens, seated well away, and letting the two of them have some illusion of privacy if they talked quietly.

  “No plan survives contact with the enemy, Wakely,” Jessica said. “We adjust, we improvise, we improve.”

  “Just like that?” Wakely responded. “Chuck it out and start over?”

  “Gods, no,” Jessica said. “Moirrey and Digger will go on as planned. You will still run things down here for the civilians. In many ways, this represents an opportunity we couldn’t have dreamed of.”

  How, exactly?

  Jessica saw the question before she actually asked it.

  “If we have to rebuild the rail yards anyway, we can make improvements. City and Planetary government will have to be reconstituted, but there won’t be any records of how things used to operate. Tabula Rasa. A blank sheet of paper. Golden opportunity.”

  “Golden,” Wakely sneered quietly.

  “Wakely, look at me,” Jessica urged fiercely. “They are in shock right now. If you hit them hard and fast you can force them to dance to your tune.”

  Dance?

  “No records means no budget means no money,” Wakely realized, hearing lock tumblers click into place. “Means they have to come to me if they want things. Means they are at my mercy, our mercy. Can we actually make this work, as screwed up as it is?”

  Jessica smiled.

  “Governor,” she looked like a hawk. “You’ve staked your reputation on it. I’ve staked my entire career.”

  Chapter XVIII

  Imperial Founding: 174/04/29. Camp Independence, Thuringwell

  “Fraser,” a voice brought him up from his brooding. “You need to see this.”

  He sat up and turned to see Conrad’s head stuck through the tent’s leather door, making the tiny, dirty space seem even smaller today.

  Fraser grunted and ran his hand back through his hair. What there was of it. This wasn’t the city, where he could amble down to the barber whenever he felt like it. Out here, they kept themselves shorn like sheep. Everything coming in now was gray, anyway.

  He fixed his second–in–command with a hard glare. This was supposed to be his quiet time. Frequently, he would be napping about now. Would have been. Wasn’t. Still no excuse to roust him, unless the world was ending.

  “What?” he growled.

  Conrad’s energy was a little too much sometimes. Partly, that was the age gap. Conrad was still in his early thirties, that emotional and physical peak when all seemed right with the world.

  Today, Fraser felt every day of his forty–seven years.

  “All hell just broke loose in Yonin, Captain,” Conrad’s voice at least modulated down so he wasn’t yelling any more.

  Or maybe Fraser was just back in this world.

  The other one had been nicer. Jeannine was there, as warm and beautiful as she had always been, short brown hair rippling in the spring breeze. Until…

  “Yonin?” Fraser’s brain finally engaged. “What?”

  “Come look.”

  And the head disappeared.

  Fraser considered going back to sleep, for half a second. But Conrad wouldn’t intrude without a reason he thought was worth being yelled at.

  Fraser levered himself mostly upright, still hunched over in the semi–darkness so he didn’t bang his head on the cross–beam that held the dirt–covered roof aloft. The camp was crude and rough, but invisible to scanners and overflights.

  They were all rebels against Imperial order here.

  Not that Imperial Security usually cared enough to chase them, once they got far enough beyond the perimeter of town and stayed away. Still, you kept to the habits that kept you alive.

  Outside, the afternoon weather was cool. Rain threatened. Possibly a late–season snow at this elevation.

  All the more reason to stay laagered in and warm.

  Fraser crossed the little gap o
f brush and pathetic trees to where a small group of his men were standing. Laying, perhaps, on the bank of a dry creek bed, peeking over and down the hillside.

  Even before he got close, Fraser knew they had been right to wake him.

  There were over a dozen craft in the air over Yonin, visible even at this distance. Small, fast ones. Dangerous looking insects seeking a victim to sting.

  The lines were all incorrect. It took a moment for his brain to register the wrongness. Those weren’t Imperial craft. Any of them.

  Fraser flopped into line on the right end, next to Conrad, who passed him a set of passive, glass optics. Nobody wanted to be emitting a radiation signature today.

  Yonin was on fire.

  No. Parts were burning, not the whole city.

  And the port was…what?

  Flames everywhere. Massive destruction. Orbital strikes?

  “What do we know?” Fraser called as he scanned slowly back and forth.

  “Massive explosion on the ground at the port, sir,” Roald called from the other end of the line. He must have had the watch this afternoon. “Couple of hours after the big freighter landed.”

  “Us?” Fraser asked grimly. You never knew if one of the other liberation movement teams might take matters into their own hands.

  “Negative,” Conrad interjected. “I’ve been listening to what radio signals I can understand. Looks like someone blew up one of the ore freighters.”

  “And you let me sleep?” Fraser growled.

  He felt Conrad’s shrug, shoulder to shoulder with him.

  “Not a lot we could do from here, Captain.”

  “Then what?” Fraser continued.

  It looked like hell had opened up down there and vomited out an army of demons. Those pulses of light from the center of the city were energy weapons reflecting off buildings. There were a lot of them.

  “Speculation only, Captain,” Conrad said quietly.

  It was funny, when he thought about it. Neither of them had ever served in the military, unlike most of the rest of the troop of misfits Fraser commanded, but they had both fallen into the other men’s habits of speech as readily as their habits of bivouac.

  “Speculate, Lieutenant,” Fraser replied.

  “Sir, I think we’re seeing a planetary invasion.”