Persephone

by Blaze Ward

  The man turned back to the downrange portion of things and stepped up to the little table that held the stunner pistol. He lifted it left handed, muttering all the while, and pointed it at the sky, just like he had been taught, finger off the trigger and weapon next to his ear, where the only threat was to stupid birds.

  “Only way I can certify you for a boarding action, Andre,” Trinidad said just loud enough to cover the profanities leaking out of the man like a failing dike. “And you’ll have to be armed at all times while aboard a captured vessel that still has any of its crew.”

  More profanities. At least these were aimed at him now, and not at Nakisha. Not that she was a fragile blossom, but Trinidad didn’t hold grudges like that woman could.

  She looked at him with a silent question. He nodded and she stepped back from being rangemaster, leaving the task to him. Trinidad stepped into the spot and came to stillness, hoping a little of it would rub off on Andre.

  The first shot was low and a little to the right. Normal. Someone expecting recoil like a pulse pistol or a slugthrower had. And jerking the trigger rather than caressing it. You had to be gentle on a trigger like that. Always with a smooth motion until you got the results you wanted.

  Who knew that learning guns would make him better in bed?

  “Gently,” Trinidad offered. “It won’t bite. You will.”

  Andre nodded unconsciously and blew out a breath, like Nakisha had been trying to teach him. Second shot was still low, but not as bad. Pulling with some flinch, but he could work with that.

  “Trigger’s softer than that, Andre,” he said. “Just caress it and let it do all the work.”

  Behind him, Nakisha snickered. Probably blushing, but he wasn’t going to look. All marines told the same dirty jokes on the gun range to new recruits.

  Better.

  Third shot had gotten high enough to count on the target signaler. Still right, but Trinidad was used to that.

  “Shift your feet a little, Andre,” he ordered politely. “Move your right foot forward twenty centimeters.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  He did and aimed again. Fourth shot set all the flashing lights off on the target dummy.

  “What happened?” Andre asked as he waited for it to reset.

  “Natural cross-over on your hands,” Trinidad said. “Normally, I would have you keep shooting square until your hands adjusted. Easier right now to just get you in the habit of turning a little when you need to shoot.”

  “Huh,” he muttered. “Now what?”

  “Now we walk you through the whole process slowly,” Trinidad said. “From full extension down to quick-draw. Once you have that, you get your little boarding action crew card and we can go play cowboy.”

  “It’s a hospital ship, Trinidad,” Andre countered in a voice reaching for angry again.

  “No, it isn’t,” Stunt Dude said. “It is an enemy warship, crewed by people that might try to kill you. You have to be ready to stop them, if they decide to take the ship back.”

  “By killing people?” Angry Andre was back. His head turned, but the gun never wavered from the target.

  “No,” Trinidad growled. “That’s my job. You have to be in command over there, so they’ll listen to you and not try something stupid. Otherwise, Nakisha and I might have to kill people. That’s what this is trying to prevent.”

  “Stupid idea,” Andre muttered under his breath.

  “Welcome to the Navy, Marine,” Trinidad fired back.

  Seventeenth Imperial Police Protectorate (November 19, 402)

  Granville studied Persephone by the light of the sun just coming over the eastern peaks. He was probably never going to manage to sleep as late as dawn again in his life, so he was up early to do things. It didn’t help that he was sleeping alone, so he didn’t even had Deni to snuggle up against for warmth.

  They had built a crane. And a dock big enough for both Anna and Persephone. The latter was inside there now, getting the last bits of work done, which involved dropping back in a blower system that had frozen from grit hidden inside. Easier to pull and repack the bearings on the ground, especially when you could pop open outer panels and just lift the whole mechanism.

  Footsteps behind him caused Granville to glance back. This early, only the folks with cattle and chicken duties were up, plus the kitchen staff. Nobody was over here.

  Able-Spacer Spier walked close, holding something flat in her hands.

  “Here, sir,” she said, handing him something. “I had these made up for everyone.”

  “What is it?” he asked, turning the cloth object over in his hands.

  “Fleet patches, sir,” she smiled up at him. “Seventeenth Imperial Police Protectorate. Found it in the computers when I asked someone to dig. Figured we needed something special for Persephone, but I’m not an artist. Maybe we commission someone to create us a ship’s patch, too?”

  It was shaped like a kiteshield patch, a little larger than his palm. Stylized image of a police cutter with two stars in the background, with the writing all the way around the top and sides.

  The pirates aboard Queen Anne’s Revenge wore civilian clothing. Claimed it got them into character, which made sense, as they were all characters in some bizarre vid. Ground Control’s crew on Packmule wore RAN uniforms, including Deni, who had been temporarily inducted, with the understanding he could resign when they got someplace safe.

  Granville and his people wore the same black-and-green of the RAN, with CS-405 on their left shoulder.

  Fleet Patch was an Imperial thing. It went on the right shoulder with a temporary burr-and-hook backing to show where a ship belonged. The last ship’s patch he had worn before CS-405 had been IFV Germania. The last fleet patch was Fourteenth Fleet, stationed out of Osynth B'Udan.

  “Why?” Granville asked after studying it for a moment, completely at a loss.

  “The others are civilians, sir,” Spier replied with conviction. “But we’re an Imperial warship, even if most of us came from Aquitaine originally. And like you said, we need to represent the Seventeenth as well. What better way to do that, especially when we get home and they make us heroes?”

  He fixed her with a firm eye, a commanding officer taking the measure of a new sailor, but the woman was almost transparent both in her confidence and her innocent naivety. She truly believed that this was the right thing to do. And she was far closer to all the training and patriotism of service than he was.

  It had been so long that he had forgotten what that was like. And he had no idea if it was appropriate, from either an Imperial or Republic standpoint, if the lawyers wanted to get involved.

  But it felt right.

  He held it up to the point of his shoulder, trying to get a feel for how it would sit. Imperial uniforms were much looser in fit, unlike the tunic he wore right now, stretched over his shoulders.

  “Let me, sir?” she asked, moving around to the side.

  One hand carefully peeled the backing, and then she grabbed his far side and held him steady while she stuck it on. He would have to add some tack stitches later, to hold the patch in place, but it would stay with him for a few days of movement, at a minimum.

  He craned his head around and held up his arm to see the effect.

  “Is good?” she asked nervously, maybe suddenly aware that an Able-Spacer wasn’t supposed to take this much initiative.

  “It’s perfect,” he replied, thinking about it. “Do you have a second one handy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She pulled it from a pocket inside her tunic and handed it over.

  Granville studied the thing for a second before he figured out how to get the backing off.

  “Your turn,” he said, moving around her so he could attach the patch to the woman in turn.

  He liked the way her face lit up when she saw it on her shoulder. Professional pride.

  He hadn’t felt something like that in years. That sense of belonging to s
omething greater was why he had joined in the first place.

  “You have more?” he asked quietly.

  She nodded, biting her lips nervously.

  “Good,” he said. “Let’s go roust the rest and get them properly uniformed this morning for breakfast.”

  “I done good?” Spier asked.

  For a moment, Granville blanked, but then he remembered that she was barely nineteen years old, possibly less than two years removed from high school.

  “You did excellent, Spier,” he reassured her. “After this, we’ll get this design painted on the outside of the hull, on the left side of the forward airlock hatch. Then we’ll find us an artist to do a ship’s patch for Persephone and have more patches and standards made.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  She fell in next to him as he turned and headed back to the main house. He had a smile on his face this morning. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. Usually neutral reserve, or scowls. But not joy.

  But yes, Persephone needed a logo. She was a warship. She was in service, protecting the Empire.

  And so was he.

  Task Force (December 3, 402)

  Siobhan looked at the display on her tiny bridge as Persephone completed her climb to orbit and joined them. As usual, Stunt Dude was in the right-hand seat. Everyone else was in back somewhere, doing stuff.

  The front quarter of the cargo deck below her had been sealed off with a bulkhead, and the front ramp removed and replaced with a solid bow. First-Rate-Spacer Harriette Neitz had joined the crew as gunner to handle the narwhal horn that had been installed, so she was probably checking that, with Markus in her side pocket with all his tools, just in case.

  They had made training runs, alone and with Persephone, blowing up asteroids and stuff, but this was the real thing. Time to go hunting.

  Queen Anne would be the forward scout, as always. CS-405 would sneak along the fringes. Packmule would stay well behind the front and keep everybody fed. And Granville Veitengruber would be pushing the envelope in his own way.

  Siobhan smiled at the thought.

  He had the only properly working primary JumpSail system. CS-405 was still running on her repaired backup, and the spare one on Persephone had simply been too small and the wrong everything to cut it out and install it on an RAN vessel. The two freighters used old-fashioned Buran JumpDrives.

  So Granville could range faster and farther than anyone else, since he didn’t need to drop out of JumpSpace regularly and throw himself across multi-space. Plus he had guns. If they hadn’t needed Anna to be able to fly right up to someone all innocent-like, she might have recommended letting Lan and Kiel go and piling all her pirates in with Veitengruber.

  But she could still sneak in places none of the others could. And she had a gun now, too. Big one. No defensive artillery, so she had to steer clear of combat, but nobody would be expecting a teeny, little freighter likes hers to have a bite. It would be like facing a carnivorous rabbit or something.

  “What’s so funny?” Stunt Dude asked from the side seat.

  Whoops. Giggle with the inside voice next time.

  “First time we actually shoot at someone,” Lady Blackbeard replied with a charming laugh. “Won’t they be surprised.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  A console light came on, indicating communications.

  “Queen Anne’s Revenge,” she replied, waiting for everyone to check in.

  “All hands, this is Acting Fleet Centurion Kosnett,” Phil announced.

  She and Heather had finally gotten him to admit that they were a full task force now, and not just a garage band. He needed to pretend to be the boss, and not just the commanding officer of the largest ship. The Imperials would have classified him as a Commodore at Captain’s rank, but Phil was RAN to his bones.

  “Task Force Barnaul is now operational,” he continued, naming them for that first raid where Anna had gone on the offensive.

  Resolute Revolution didn’t count, because that was almost accidental, and they were giving the ship back later. Maybe. Or something.

  Privately, the betting was that Anna would be properly impressed into service and Kiel and Lan paid cash for the hull, with the understanding that they would turn around and buy a freighter from the Imperials. And the assembled crew of CS-405 would all chip in to buy them a full cargo before they went home.

  “We will maintain formation as much as possible until we congregate at Layover Delta,” Phil ordered the ships, knowing that nobody was going to make anything like the same speed across.

  Persephone could fly straight there in one shot. CS-405 could do something similar, but still needed to drop out to cool things off and realign the matrix regularly. Anna would be almost as fast as 405, and Packmule would lumber along in their wake.

  “At that point, we will begin scouting our target for the assault,” Phil’s voice had grown even harder and more serious than normal now. “I will remind you, unnecessarily, that stealth is critical, if we wish the second part of this campaign to succeed, so everyone will continue to maintain the highest standards of conduct for the RAN. And the Seventeenth Imperial Police Protectorate.”

  Siobhan pictured Veitengruber turning beet red at those words, even as his crew cheered. They had updated their uniforms to reflect Persephone’s temporary ensign, at least until they could get back to civilization and have Aquitaine’s First Lord give it her blessing. And maybe Fourth Lord. Assuming the Emperor didn’t just overrule them.

  The woman just might.

  Veitengruber had been an Imperial officer first. And that had been an Imperial hull. And Seventeenth Imperial Police Protectorate would have a strong opinion, as well.

  Better make them all look good.

  “Queen Anne’s Revenge, you have the flag,” Phil ordered.

  “All hands, this is Siobhan Skokomish, aboard Queen Anne’s Revenge. I have the flag,” she said calmly, letting the lasers send her words across the entire Task Force. “All vessels, conform to my heading and prepare for JumpSpace.”

  She looked over at Stunt Dude. He was practically vibrating with excitement, like a dog on a car ride, or a kid that needed to pee. But this would be his show, if they launched an assault.

  She reached out a hand and selected the menu for the JumpDrives on her screen.

  The big, purple button flashed once, indicating a full charge on the system and everything ready to go.

  Queen Anne’s Revenge leapt out of the universe.

  Weasels in the Hen House (January 3, 403)

  Every solar system was quiet, when you were sitting clear out on the south-pole-inner-fringe of the Oort Cloud. Phil enjoyed the view from here as CS-405 pretended to be another comet drifting in the darkness.

  Kyzyl was a fairly new colony, according to Kiel’s notes on the sector. Another one that had been established just before the war with the Fribourg Empire suddenly turned hot enough to choke off resources in the interior. In forty years, they had built a single town on a nice harbor, with farmers slowly working their way inland up the two main rivers, and a series of fishing communities up and down the coast in both directions.

  Total planetary population today was around fifteen million, with pitifully-few exports of note. Kiel and her husband had never been here, because it was well off the main trade routes, and the people on the planet were probably at least another generation from making enough above survival to make it profitable to even come here.

  That was one of the reasons that the DeathGod in charge sent hospital ships to various outposts on a semi-regular circuit. According to the notes, the only hospital on the planet had maybe fifty beds, total, and the only medical staff had been sent here from somewhere else.

  Poor, backwards, and isolated. Prime targets for pirates.

  Phil didn’t enjoy this part of his job, even knowing they were the enemy. People would die because of him. And not in war, where it was an acceptable outcome. Children wouldn’t get some life-saving surge
ry if he was successful, because the doctors never came.

  He was a farmer culling sheep for the winter, deciding who would live and who would not. War was hell, and in some ways he was no better than Buran.

  Until he remembered a prison planet a long ways away from here. Filled with men who wouldn’t even get something like a hospital ship to fix simple problems. They would just die from basic things.

  Fribourg and Aquitaine had been at war off and on for several centuries, but prisoners taken in combat were always traded home in fairly short order. Perhaps a year in a transfer camp at most, and then you were back with your loved ones, or back on duty.

  These men were the forgotten. The Lost.

  Phil would see them home. The only question was how much damage he had to do to The Holding first.

  “Evan,” he finally stirred from the hypnotic images on his screen. “What’s the latest?”

  “Assuming they’re not using some complicated misdirection code, they’ll be breaking orbit in roughly ninety hours, sir,” the Science Officer replied quickly. “They’ve got a ship on the ground that’s almost as big as Cayenne, sir. Auberon’s old Nightshade-class DropShip. It’s a flying hospital, with full surgical capabilities and around two hundred medical personnel. That will be lifting in about a day and a half, and then docking with the main ship, prior to departure.”

  “And still no orbital defenses?” Phil asked.

  “Negative, sir,” Evan nodded. “The usual four satellites: three to mark your grid, and the fourth filled with metals and water.”

  “What’s the squadron’s supply situation?” Phil asked.

  Evan was acting as First Officer, with Heather and Siobhan both gone. He needed to remember to transcend the Sciences duties and cover everyone. Especially with a task force.

  Evan paused to flip through some screens on his console.

  “We used a lot of metal building that dry-dock, back at the Lighthouse, sir,” he finally replied. “We’re not currently critical, but restocking would probably be a good idea, depending on our next phases.”