by Blaze Ward
PETRON
THE JESSICA KELLER CHRONICLES: VOLUME 9
BLAZE WARD
KNOTTED ROAD PRESS
CONTENTS
I. Overtures
I. Overture: Vibol
Overture: Torsten
Overture: Jessica
Overture: Tadej
Overture: Casey
II. Wedding
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
III. The Long Run
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
IV. Confrontation
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Chapter XL
Chapter XLI
Chapter XLII
Chapter XLIII
V. The Great War
Chapter XLIV
Chapter XLV
Chapter XLVI
Chapter XLVII
Chapter XLVIII
Chapter XLIX
Chapter L
Chapter LI
Chapter LII
Chapter LIII
Chapter LIV
Chapter LV
Chapter LVI
Chapter LVII
Chapter LVIII
Chapter LIX
Chapter LX
Chapter LXI
Chapter LXII
Chapter LXIII
Chapter LXIV
Chapter LXV
Chapter LXVI
Chapter LXVII
Chapter LXVIII
Chapter LXIX
Chapter LXX
VI. Epilogues
Epilogue – Andrea
Epilogue – Denis
Epilogue – Tiki
Epilogue – Phil
Epilogue – Jessica
Epilogue – Vo
Epilogue – Casey
Epilogue – Pint-sized
Conclusion – Jessica
Petron Cast List
About the Author
Also by Blaze Ward
About Knotted Road Press
PART ONE
OVERTURES
PART ONE
OVERTURE: VIBOL
IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF JESSICA KELLER, QUEEN OF THE PIRATES: JANUARY THE SIXTH AT PETRON
Fashion is the art of planning so successfully, so far in advance, that the results look like magic when they come together. Every seam aligns as if the very Gods themselves came down and touched the garment with their blessing.
Vibol kept that in mind as he angrily stuffed his finger into his mouth to stop any blood from dripping and staining the masterpiece of cloth that lay vengeful in his lap. It would not have been so personally embarrassing to stick himself with a needle, save that he was not alone in his studio today, the ever-present and intelligently-silent bouncers Jessica required around him at all times notwithstanding.
Seeker looked up from the notebook in which he was committing further memories to paper for posterity, spies, and the morbidly-curious. His silent grin made the entire farce even worse.
Next to the tiny man, Amala Bhattacharya assaulted Vibol’s serenity with a single, well-shaped eyebrow that communicated volumes silently. She did that now. Gone was the dowdy Security Centurion who had come to him as nothing but raw material.
Jessica had turned the woman into an Ambassador. A Personal Representative to the Throne of Corynthe, something vaguely similar to the Ritters of the Imperial Household that were embodied in Moirrey, Vo, and even Casey herself, before she became the entirety of the Fribourg Empire and could speak with her own voice.
Amala was still the first such Representative. As far as Vibol was aware, there were only three, being Amala, Torsten Wald, and the now-apparently-disappeared-forever-again Summer Ulfsson.
Amala let her face slide into a warmer smile, so Vibol removed the offending digit from his mouth and inspected it. And took it as a sign from those self-same Gods that he risked offending them at this point if he pursued punishing himself. He placed the cloth on a handy table next to his personal tackle box with a suppressed sigh.
“I’ve never actually seen you do that to yourself,” Amala volunteered vaguely.
“Nor should you have,” Vibol snapped, still angry at himself. “I appear to be subconsciously punishing myself for my mistakes. I should have foreseen this situation.”
“And it will take you how many days to rectify the situation, Minister of Fashion?” Seeker tweaked him with the slightest grin on his face.
Vibol allowed it. These two conspirators represented his closest kin and friends over the last half decade. With Amala, he had helped invade Seeker’s world, politely overthrowing the then-Khan of Trusski and starting an even greater revolution.
But for Jessica’s obstinacy later, the three of them would have no doubt been press-ganged into more and greater revolutions within the former Protectorate of Man, now bereft of the very God that had shaped their lives for two thousand years.
“Two days,” Vibol answered the man, setting his pique to one side again to focus on his art as he realized he was being childish. “I will fit her in the afternoon tomorrow, and then finish things after that. Mostly sizing everything and finishing seams so that it looks perfect, knowing how much a woman’s body can change over the course of a month.”
“And you have how long until the ceremony?” Seeker pressed, Socratically challenging that self-same pique and grinding it into dust under the weight of his logic and sarcasm.
“Nine weeks,” Vibol allowed with only the faintest huff to his voice. “But much could go wrong in that time.”
“As none of the participants are likely pregnant at this time, I cannot imagine the need to make radical revisions to their costumes,” Amala grinned. “And the men’s outfits are loose to begin with. Plus, you’ve completed the remaining ones.”
“Yes, but…”
“Hush, you old fuss-bucket,” Amala interrupted him.
She could do that. She was still technically his commanding officer, as nobody had ever remembered to undo the orders sending him to invade Trusski at her side as a mere First Rate Spacer. The three of them had fallen under the orders of Emmerich zu Wachturm for a time, who had apparently forgotten the details. Or ignored them.
Later, after St. Legier was nearly destroyed, Amala and Seeker had been kept in strict isolation from any but the most trusted Imperial citizens. And Vibol had moved on as Personal Tailor to Kasimira.
“One, I’m going to laugh at you forever for not anticipating this one,” Amala continued. “Especially since you are usually nine steps ahead of all of us, except perhaps Jessica. Two, it will be utterly gorgeous and you and I both know it. Plus, it’s Jessica’s party, so nobody will remember her until they look at pictures later. And Jessica will be utterly breathtaking. I hope to look that good on my wedding day.”
Vibol and Seeker both perked up, however quietly.
“No, I do not have
a candidate in mind,” she snapped, turning to look at both older men individually.
At one time, Vibol had secretly wondered if the former Khan of Trusski might fill such a role, but, like Vibol, he was older than Amala’s own sire, so the two men had become extra father figures to the young security Centurion.
Young enough. She would be thirty-seven this year. About time the damn woman settled down, especially now that the wars were over.
Vibol made a mental note to begin stalking potential suitors for his third favorite daughter.
“And we weren’t talking about me,” Amala put a conversational foot down.
“Indeed,” Vibol surrendered the field to his two friends. “I should have seen it. We all should have. The woman has been in the background for nearly thirty years, but always there.”
“So you will make her gorgeous, Vibol,” Seeker said. “Just as Jessica, Casey, and Moirrey will be. And that is that.”
“It is indeed,” Vibol grumbled, perhaps just a little. “I will make Jessica’s fourth Warden as stunning as the others. I owe Marcelle Travere that much.”
OVERTURE: TORSTEN
IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF JESSICA KELLER, QUEEN OF THE PIRATES: JANUARY THE ELEVENTH AT PETRON
Because it was already part of his exercise routine, Torsten had found it easy enough to get up a little earlier than usual most days and include an informal meeting with Uly Larionov as part of a ten kilometer run, just as the sun was rising, at least theoretically rising today behind a morning drizzle. They would stretch together and chat, without necessarily making things official. Torsten had no official role in the government, save representing Jessica and protecting her. Uly and David and Desianna were responsible for the daily tasks.
They made Jessica’s occasional pronouncements law, and worked with various advisory bodies to make sure the government itself ran. Jessica did not need to know about standards for agricultural measurements, just that there was enough food available, if an emergency occurred.
More importantly, running like this kept all their bodyguards in shape, Uly being too important to take a loop around Petron’s capital city, Corynthe, without also having a half dozen much younger men in hand.
Even with a titanium replacement for more than half of one leg, Torsten still had to go through his morning stretching routine like a religion. Perhaps more so, since he needed to keep the organic parts limber enough to keep working. The metal wouldn’t age appreciably before they buried him.
“Messenger came in late yesterday,” Uly said as they finished stretching and started towards the front gate of the palace in a light haze of wetness. “Lady Casey’s fleet is about a week and a half behind him, and they wanted to make sure everybody understood that it wasn’t a planetary invasion.”
“That’s impressive,” Torsten noted as a mob of men fell in around them. “Just what did she bring?”
Around them, a dozen men with guns strapped to thighs or under arms set up a moving perimeter that would keep the average civilian at a safe distance, as would the armed truck floating along behind them, in case somebody wanted to do something ill-advised.
Jessica had broken the truly stupid ones more than a decade ago, killing most of them off in the purge following the battle that brought her to the throne. But stupid was always a plague vector in humanity.
“Wachturm must have put his foot down,” Uly laughed. “The original plan I read was for a couple of cruisers and escorts, but they’re arriving in a Heavy Dreadnaught, a dozen of Bedrov’s cruisers, and two dozen corvettes, plus a mob of cargo freighters and civilian boats filled with important people who want to be here. You’d think they were expecting to face pirates or something.”
Torsten laughed with him. Corynthe had been founded on piracy. Until Arnulf Rodriguez seized the throne thirty-some years ago, it had been more of a realm of pirates than an actual kingdom. Aquitaine had sent Jessica, and let her retain her second role, because they saw the benefit from civilizing the far fringes of the galaxy beyond Lincolnshire, even if they didn’t share any borders with the pirates.
“Are so many ships going to be a problem?” Torsten asked, letting his brain absorb the data and file it away so he could pull it out later as information.
The warships would remain in orbit, but space was big, as long as everyone behaved. The smaller yachts could land on a planetary surface, where no doubt a number of Dukes, Landgrafs, and Burggrafs would need to play tourist and inject cash into the local economy in a scale Uly probably hadn’t planned for. At least not yet.
There would be trade deals to be had, so Uly would be involved from an official standpoint, and then send his niece Kari and her husband Galen as family representatives to get a slice as well.
Hopefully, the Imperials would bring enough bodyguards to protect themselves and not just wander into some of the darker and more dangerous parts of town. Piracy was a state of mind, and not everyone had gotten over it yet.
“No problem,” Uly replied with a grunt that sounded like a laugh. “A staff econometricist did an exceptional job of planning, once upon a time. Tossed my plans into the trash and pulled out his third contingencies. How did you know I’d be dealing with an invasion, however polite it looks on the surface?”
“You’ve never met the Grand Admiral in person, Uly,” Torsten laughed. “Only the old Red Admiral before Jessica lit a fire under his ass.”
“That tough?” Uly asked with a sidelong glance as the jogged companionably.
“St. Legier happened,” Torsten replied. “In an afternoon, the whole government was gone. But for Provst and Arlo, Fribourg might have come apart at that point. Until we can get Casey and Vo properly married off and having children, the Imperial Succession Plan contains a few men we’d just as soon never got any closer to the throne than they are now. Em’s number four today, after some others with distaff connections to Karl V, but he doesn’t want the job. There’s no way in hell that he lets Casey come out here without enough firepower to annihilate the entire Corynthe Fleet, if he has to.”
“Gimme five more years and that force wouldn’t be enough,” Uly said in an offhanded way. “Tax revenue is coming along nicely as David plays carrot and stick games with some of the outliers. And Bedrov and Nakamura have gotten into a pissing match again.”
“Oh, dear God, now what?” Torsten asked.
Pops Nakamura, Crown Naval Designer of Corynthe, Retired. Still a pain in the ass some days.
Yan Bedrov, current Crown Naval Designer of Corynthe. Always a pain in the ass, however much Torsten liked the man.
Best friends. Respected competitors. Teenage boys with too much sophisticated design modeling software at their disposal.
“It’s Jessica’s fault,” Uly laughed. “One of those Dowager Queen remarks she likes to drop into conversations to remind people that David will formally be adopted as Crown Prince soon, and then she’ll retire and make him legally boss.”
Torsten could just imagine what his dear love had done now.
Especially with those two clowns.
“Go ahead,” Torsten said, looking at the evil smile on Uly’s face. “Ruin my morning and my digestion.”
“One of Jessica’s folks came up with something new,” Uly said. “Took a Type-2 beam and made a pulse version of it, like the point-defense Type-1-Pulse on the corvettes. The one Moirrey invented.”
