Goddess of War (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 4)

by Blaze Ward

  One desk. One man. No chairs for guests. It wasn’t that kind of office.

  Merryn would have said shark in shallow waters, but the man reminded her of a sudden cobra in a wood pile, rearing up and flaring his hood at her. At them.

  Unlike the spy who had brought them here, this man was very, very dangerous. Even Hao recognized that and retreated behind a shell of polite bonhomie after they entered.

  Promises and other silent questions passed over the women’s heads to the spy who had been their escort, before he retreated and left them alone.

  The silence stretched. Cobra was unhappy. And yet, he needed something from her. Had to even ask politely. Had to treat a woman as a Captain, and not a female encumbrance.

  For the briefest moment, she could see the wash of anger in his eyes at the entire situation, before he crushed it and asserted his dominance over the room. It was like musk filling the air, without a single word.

  Merryn was singularly impressed.

  “We have just returned from Thuringwell,” Merryn decided to open hard and fast on the man. “I’m sure you were aware by now that a naval force from the Republic of Aquitaine is currently occupying the system under martial law.”

  The cobra studied her closely, like she had turned into a mongoose. Merryn kept expecting a tongue to flicker out.

  “And yet you escaped, Captain Teke?” the man finally spoke.

  He had a voice like eighteen–year–old scotch. Warm and smooth and caramel, until it got to your center and erupted briefly. She could almost taste the knife in his words.

  “Admiral Keller demands that commerce continue, sir,” she countered. “Apparently, the shipping houses are all making deals. My vessel was simply the first to be allowed to depart.”

  It even sounded plausible.

  “And what information can you provide?”

  He was suddenly much less hostile. Here was a proper Imperial citizen running to the authorities with stories of monsters in the night. Exactly the sort of thing the Imperial Security Bureau was empowered to handle.

  “Not much, sir,” Merryn took care to sound helpfully distressed. “My ship’s records were wiped of all militarily–useful data in the process of my vessel undergoing a thorough inspection by Aquitaine military engineers. I suspect spies.”

  And she didn’t need to mention that she had wiped those records herself. She might yet be considered a spy. If that nasty cruiser sneaking around was a shock to her, it would be doubly so to everyone else who wasn’t expecting it.

  Maybe she was a spy. Certainly, not a patriot, considering all the guns and things she had smuggled in for Redyert over the years.

  “It will be unfortunately necessary to subject you to a very intense interrogation, then, Captain Teke,” he purred at her.

  It sounded almost wistful, like he really wanted to get out the honey and the ants, or the electrodes for her nipples, and would have to just settle for bright lights and mental abuse.

  She had experienced Imperial Security confined to polite questioning when they couldn’t prove she had done anything. They still couldn’t prove it.

  Merryn flashed back to Governor Okafor in her office, offering tea and sizing her up. No threats. No bluster. Was that what it was like to live in Aquitaine as a woman? To not have to be twice as good as any man to be considered half his equal?

  “Your associate will not need to be detained while we question you,” he continued.

  For the slightest moment, Merryn lost her grip on the anger she had been holding on to.

  “Funny,” Merryn countered with an edge to her voice her mother had taught her. “I thought I was a loyal Imperial citizen, voluntarily attempting to help. I hadn’t realized I was to be treated like a common criminal.”

  One did not run guns to rebel groups in a fit of pique. At least, not for that many years. That was a calculated intent. But one might still be possessed of a great and terrible anger that convinced them to do such a thing in the first place. And to keep doing it in the face of deadly risk.

  Outwardly, she was as loyal as the day was long. If they could have proven anything, she would have simply disappeared along the way, with little more than a footnote in a quarterly report filed away somewhere.

  She had rights. Hao as well, but Fribourg counted a man, or a woman, extra when they captained a vessel as large as hers.

  The spy, the cobra, recoiled, ever so slightly, under the lash of her tone, rather like the previous man had. Perhaps they had both known high–borne women who would brook no nonsense. It was a common enough Imperial archetype that she knew how to exploit.

  “Not at all, Madam Teke,” the man countered quickly. “My apologies for a poor choice of words. Your assistance is most valuable. I will find you a comfortable room and a good secretary to aid one of my men in directing your conversation towards useful topics.”

  He pushed a button on his desk that must have been wired to a siren in the hall, from the speed with which the tall man returned.

  Ξ

  They took her and Hao to a small office downstairs, barely big enough for four people around a table.

  In the end, it required take–out from a competent Italian restaurant: several kinds of pasta, containers of sauce, and small boxes of meatballs, washed down liberally with fresh tea; to get through the ordeal. Merryn could not remember ever talking for so long without a break or a nap.

  Hours had passed. Night had fallen to utter dark, broken only by the waxing light of the smaller moon, not much better than a flashlight to see as they made their way from the Security agent’s ground transport to the base of the airlock ramp.

  No one had spoken on the ride back. Merryn from exhaustion. Hao from overall twitchiness. The agent from his training, or watching too many vids.

  Once outside, in the cool air, Hao took her hand like they were schoolgirls and practically drug her up the ramp. Still, without a spotter, Merryn rated it fifty/fifty she would have tripped and slid back down, or managed to pitch herself over the side, since her eyes kept wanting to cross.

  At the top of the ramp, Tyler met them, a carbine rifle carefully tucked away by his side and a look like the little, rabid Chihuahua’s angry, big brother. Go figure.

  They got her inside and got the airlock door sealed without a word.

  “Will they actually buy any of that squamph you were peddling back there?” Hao finally asked in an excited giggle.

  “I don’t care,” Merryn replied tiredly.

  She looked up and saw Yan had joined them. She had her whole crew, her whole family here supporting her.

  “So now what?” Hao continued.

  “Pack well for our departure,” Merryn said. “Get as much material as we can carry. Then I’m going to the bank and converting three–quarters of my saving to negotiable instruments to bring them with us back to Thuringwell, en route to Aquitaine.”

  “Only three–quarters?” Yan perked up.

  “If I close the account, right now, it will set off all sorts of alarms and they might arrest us on general principle,” Merryn explained herself. “If, however, I have a great story about an investment opportunity, cash only, back on Thuringwell with a trading house about to change sides, they might not flinch.”

  Hao had a gleam in her eyes.

  “You’ll need to sell it just right,” she purred. “Maybe they’ll want in and hand you a briefcase filled with money on the spot.”

  “We can only hope, Hao,” Merryn said. “Fifteen minutes after the fleet gets to Thuringwell, they’ll know they’ve been had and we can never come back to the Empire.”

  “What did you tell them, Captain?” Yan asked.

  “That cruiser that nearly smoked us? Shivaji?” she replied. “They missed it when they were scouting. They’re only expecting the one Battlecruiser and a couple of light jobs. And they sure has hell aren’t accounting for all the fighters Keller packed away in her Winter Stocking. Or that industrious, little minelayer in orbit. A good little Im
perial citizen would have corrected their notes.”

  Right now, however, she just wanted sleep. In another twelve hours, they might be ready. Hit the bank first thing, run like hell, and get across the border before anybody was the wiser.

  Despite her exhaustion, Merryn had never felt so alive.

  Chapter XLVI

  Date of the Republic July 18, 396 SC Auberon. Above Thuringwell

  Jessica knew it would be interesting when Enej knocked on her door with his knuckles, and then opened the hatch two beats later without her doing it. When everything could be sent electronically, human contact was unnecessary.

  That made the message itself important.

  Jessica closed the document she was reviewing and looked up, eyes wide with inquiry.

  “Fraser Cydelmynster is on a secured comm, asking specifically for you,” Enej said simply. “Fourth Saxon picked it up and patched it to us through their network.”

  Jessica could think of a number of reasons the man might be calling her instead of the Legate or the Governor. All of them were rather interesting.

  “I’ll presume they know where he is, by now?” Jessica asked.

  “Probably within meters, boss,” Enej replied. “Should they do anything about it?”

  “No,” Jessica decided abruptly. “Send a signal to the Legate that he may want to drop his Heavy Scout team close by, and to prepare, but not to move without my explicit orders.”

  “Got it.”

  And Enej was gone.

  Jessica sucked the last few drops of warmth from her nearly–empty coffee mug and settled herself into her chair. Just because, she cleared everything off of it as well, which involved putting her tablet computer in a drawer and adding the clipboard with a pen.

  She already lived lean.

  Jessica reached out and triggered the call button on her comm, waiting there patiently for its current moment of glory on one side of her desk.

  The air got scratchy as the call was patched through so many links.

  “This is Keller,” she announced.

  She waited.

  “Fleet Centurion, my name is Fraser Cydelmynster,” the man replied slowly.

  She could hear a vast weight in his tones. He had a mellow voice, somewhere between tenor and baritone normally, she would have guessed.

  Today, he was just dog–tired.

  “I realize that I am not in a position to strike a hard deal,” he continued in that slow cadence. “However, I am generally acknowledged as the leader of the forces dedicated to liberating Thuringwell from the petit aristocracy of stupidity that rules us. And I need your help.”

  Well, that was certainly novel. Invoking the brotherhood of command. The Legate would appreciate the move, as would several other people she had no doubt were monitoring the channel on mute.

  “The Duke no longer rules here, Cydelmynster,” she replied carefully.

  She doubted he was including her in his classifications. Certain phrases become ingrained and must be excised over time. And certainly, the previous Duke had been a blind fool, but that was not an uncommon trait in a world of vast, inherited wealth and power. Fribourg was stronger than Aquitaine, but far more brittle.

  “No,” the man replied with worn care. “But his lackey still roams.”

  “And what help could I provide?” Jessica challenged. “You have not yet accepted my authority.”

  “I accept your power, Admiral. Fleet Centurion. Most of my people have chosen to return to civilization and accept you.”

  “And you, Fraser?” Jessica took a chance and pushed the conversation into the personal. “What will you do?”

  The Fribourg Empire, like Aquitaine, maintained a level of discipline around names. Strangers, and even co–workers, would address each other by their family name, frequently for years, until invited.

  Only friends, lovers, and comrades in arms would generally be free to use a given name.

  The Brotherhood of Command.

  “I swore an oath, Fleet Centurion,” he replied after the briefest pause. “One that has nothing to do with you. But today, I cannot execute on that oath without dying unsuccessfully, stupidly. I have a hard kernel of troops under my command. We have located what I believe is Haussmann’s primary base, but in attacking it, we would be forty against hundreds, in someone else’s bloody war.”

  Jessica could almost hear the Legate and Primus Pilus yelling at her to make a deal, any deal that would get them those coordinates. She expected text messages to start chirping on her tablet any second now. That was one of the reasons it was tucked away in a drawer.

  This conversation was just between the two of them.

  He might have forty. Intelligence analysis was pretty firm that Haussmann had around five hundred. Jessica had an entire fleet at her command, with Fourth Saxon, LVIII Heavy, and all of her own marines available in a pinch. A force as much bigger than Haussmann’s as his was over Cydelmynster’s.

  “What was your oath, Fraser?” she asked, again pushing into the personal.

  If rumors were to be believed, the man had personally conjured the entire liberation movement himself from thin air. Certainly, he had taken small bands of roving outlaws and turned them into a full–on guerilla force, however small it might be.

  A few years from now, he might be the kind of man who could get himself elected Governor of Thuringwell, and be a good one, if he didn’t get himself killed today.

  “When they murdered Jeannine, my wife, I swore I would not rest until Haussmann and his kind were destroyed,” Cydelmynster replied.

  Jessica could hear the pain in his voice, the unimaginable loss he carried with him every day, even years later.

  It was something else she shared with the man, beyond the hollow rigors of command, even if she doubted a man like that would know it.

  Jessica hoped he would find a way to survive. Too many people chose to die in circumstances like this. She nearly had, until Desianna had gotten through to her, held her when she cried, anchored her enough to maintain her balance, long enough for her to stand on her own.

  “And what did you want from me?” she asked again.

  It was necessary for him to speak the words now. This might be what it took for the man to break out of that place where grief had driven him. Certainly she would not help without him asking, either in the field or in the mind.

  “I would like my force to be an independent command under your cavalry’s orders when they get here to go down there and crush the man,” he said heavily. “If that means we take the point and get used up opening the way, that will be enough for me, and for the men and women under my command. They are all here for much the same reason.”

  So, death and glory in battle?

  Jessica could see the Legate and the Primus Pilus nodding to each other across whatever table they shared. They would happily destroy Fraser and his troop to protect their own. Grind the strangers like hamburger. Simple math. Less important ex–Imperial rebels instead of highly trained cavalry troopers.

  She would have to break the two of them of that thinking. Perhaps even nicely.

  Winning Thuringwell over the long term depended on exactly this man and his most loyal soldiers surviving the coming battle.

  Jessica was about to speak, to offer the man some reassurance in accepting his offer, when Enej opened the door silently and walked to her desk. He handed her an actual printed piece of paper while he pushed the button to mute the conversation at this end.

  Probably something very rash from Fourth Saxon, since they couldn’t get hold of her directly.

  She read the words and felt her heart stop.

  She looked up at Enej, and he simply nodded.

  Jessica took a moment to get her voice and adrenaline under control.

  She pressed the button and brought the conversation live.

  “Captain Cydelmynster, I accept your offer,” she said firmly. “However, you will not be attacking that base today.”

  “Why i
s that, Fleet Centurion?” he asked carefully.

  She could hear the weight lifting off his back as he spoke.

  “Because Haussmann and his Security forces have just launched a major assault on the new railroad yard that is about to connect the old mines and the economy to Thuringwell’s future,” she replied. “I want your force in place to intercept them when they retreat to their base.”

  “At your command, Fleet Centurion,” his voice snapped to attention.

  “Stand by for my Flag Centurion, Captain Cydelmynster,” Jessica said.

  She keyed the comm closed, and then connected directly to the Legate’s office.

  “You’ve heard about the attack on Ramsey Starport?” she asked as soon as he answered.

  “Affirmative, Commander,” Burdge drawled simply. “We presumed another hit and fade, but this one is much bigger. I’m already vectoring as many ground forces in as I can spare.”

  “Where are Dash, Vo, and Rebekah?” she continued.

  “Already loaded,” he said. “Was expecting you to drop them on Cydelmynster.”

  “Get Fraser’s coordinates, then drop Dash on Haussmann’s best line of retreat,” she ordered. “Then get the locals integrated as scouts and be prepared to be the cork in the bottle.”

  “What about air cover?” Burdge asked.

  Aquitaine owned the sky and orbit.

  Something didn’t feel right.

  “Would you pull an attack like this if you were worried about airstrikes and GunShips, Burdge?”

  “Hell, no, Fleet Centurion,” he snarled back. “I’d be camped on a bunch of defensive artillery just waiting for some stupid throttle–jockey to buzz me low enough I could stuff a missile up his ass. Hell, I might launch an attack like this just draw them in so I could kill them.”

  “Then you and I are thinking the same way, Legate,” she answered. “Can the base hold until you can get there?”

  “Not if Haussmann pushes hard, Commander. But I can drop people close enough to push him sideways before he does too much damage to people. Hardware is likely to be used up.”