Petron

by Blaze Ward

  “What did Kasum tell you?” Em turned back to Jessica with a serious look.

  Jessica paused to study the faces around her. Torsten. Kigali. Denis. Uly. And Grand Admiral Emmerich zu Wachturm.

  Men she could trust with her life and her secrets. Even Uly Larionov, her Comptroller of the Court.

  His blade had slain a king in her hands.

  “Nils saw it all coming,” Jessica said carefully. “Not Vo, but much of the rest. All designed to help destabilize Fribourg before Casey got the time she needed to put things to rights. To start a civil war, and a cold war with Aquitaine. And perhaps a hot one. To motivate the Dukes to some level of stupidity. To cause border planets to perhaps declare an armed neutrality, especially as many of them were Republic worlds a century ago and probably haven’t forgotten that.”

  Em leaned back and thought furiously. He turned back to Kigali.

  “One more name,” Em said. “Nils Kasum. Jessica, you’ll need to make sure that Rosemonde is safe here, probably hidden as well, so Horvat can’t use her as a lever on the man, but he needs to be gone when we go.”

  “Kasum?” Kigali was surprised.

  “When I was a young Captain, Kigali,” Em smiled genuinely, “a young Emperor Karl VII tasked me with stopping a dangerous Command Centurion. A man named Nils Kasum. Later, Fleet Lord Kasum, First Fleet Lord, and First Lord. You all forget that half of my terrible legend is due to Nils Kasum. Jessica owns the other half. At least so far. I have no idea what will happen when Casey wants her third carved out, but thank you for being willing to continue doing what you think is right. You might all become outlaws to your own government for this.”

  “We’ve just saved the galaxy from being overrun by a God, Em,” Jessica said. “Now we’ll stop a megalomaniac.”

  CHAPTER XII

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC MARCH 15, 405 CITY OF CORYNTHE, PETRON

  “WHAT DO YOU MEAN, GONE?” Judit demanded as the man stood calmly at attention before her. “There aren’t that many places he could be.”

  She was in her suite of offices in the Embassy, a bland, interchangeable place well removed from the permanent Ambassador and his staff. She could do her work here with far fewer interruptions.

  “Understood, Governor,” Kamil Miloslav replied as patiently as he did everything, “However, Nils was not at the palace where Keller had placed him and his wife. Additionally, security has tightened considerably around the entire city, and everyone entering or leaving the Embassy is being subjected to a greatly-heightened level of scrutiny, compared to even yesterday.”

  “Damn it!” she raged. “Did someone warn them? Do we have a leak in the Embassy?”

  It was helpful that the man ignored the entirely-rhetorical question. He was just the personal courier that hand-carried messages between Judit and Tad. The only reason he had even set foot in the Embassy was that she hadn’t expected to be here long enough to need a private palace for herself and her staff, as she had had on St. Legier.

  Judit wondered if she had outsmarted herself.

  Hindsight was an exact science. She had arrived three weeks ago. Just in time for the wedding itself and ugly aftermath she had planned. With no intentions of being here much longer.

  In retrospect, she should have been here several months, and made it look like she was here for a long term. But she had not been expecting Keller to react so aggressively, or so negatively.

  At least Jessica had thrown her out before getting to the bottom of the conspiracy. Otherwise, she would have had a chance to realize whose fingerprints she would find. That fool should have never allowed himself to be taken alive. He knew too much. And there was no way in Hell that any of her other agents might get close enough to silence the assassin now.

  Yes, Judit had overplayed her hand. She wondered if Keller or any of her people would be here in June when a legitimate courier from Naoumov might arrive, conveying orders that Keller and her Merry Men would have no option but to obey.

  At least she had Aeliaes and d’Maine in hand. Competent, dangerous commanders that Tad could plug in. Although it might be necessary to grind them down like knife blades left on the sharpening stone too long if Keller began making noises about remaining outside the purview of the Navy. They might turn out to be too loyal to the woman to be of any use to Aquitaine.

  Keller could still refuse those orders, even after the Courier arrived. The Senate had voted her an exemption to many restrictions, in order for Jessica to remain Queen of her barbarians. It had been a good idea at the time, too, defining the border with Lincolnshire and continuing the generational process of reducing crime and piracy on the galactic fringe.

  But now the Senate would have to vote to rescind those rights granted to Keller. And they might have to wait until Jessica refused the first set of orders, as Keller had already caught them out timing a conspiracy too closely.

  Judit wondered if the woman would go truly rogue at that point. Take herself as a pirate queen too seriously and surrender her citizenship. Lincolnshire was too weak to do more than temporarily hold a porous border against Keller’s wolfpacks if they got serious, so Aquitaine would have to put naval forces on that border to protect their treaty ally.

  Briefly, Judit chuckled to herself.

  A decade ago, Tad had sent an Aquitaine squadron to Lincolnshire to help with a pirate problem. Keller had ended up solving the problem by taking the throne here. Now she might become a new problem by holding it.

  Judit wondered if things might be better by removing Keller from power once and for all. Either way worked. Keller would return to Ladaux, or she would become a problem for Naoumov to solve. That might actually be a good thing, as it would break what might potentially become a Fribourg ally capable of starting a second front against what Judit and Tad had planned.

  Judit realized that Kamil was still standing there. He would wait all day if necessary, he had proven that in the past.

  “Burn everything,” she decided abruptly. “Assume a risk of Keller having spies in the Embassy, among those who will remain behind when the major players are forced to depart. Assume that your own papers are at risk on the flight back to Ladaux. Destroy all of my records in the third cabinet yourself, and sift the ashes.”

  “Very good, Governor,” he replied, nodding and departing from her office and leaving Judit alone.

  She had presumed that she would be able to nail down Keller and all her commanders with those activation orders. Get them off planet quickly and under military discipline before they could react. At the very least keep them isolated and quiet, if not actively participating in the coming war.

  Someone had to have warned them. And Kasum as well. Who did Keller have on the inside that could have prepared her so perfectly to stop Judit’s machinations?

  Wald, perhaps? That man had been in charge of the spies she had to navigate while on St. Legier. Perhaps he knew more than he had let on? Did he have his own spy network that was still active and feeding him tidbits?

  Judit made a mental note when she got home to talk to Tad about possibly eliminating Torsten Wald, especially if Keller was going to resist them. That might break Keller at the same time, to lose another lover, like she once had lost Ishikura.

  How perfectly symmetrical that the pirate kingdom might be the death of another man she loved.

  PART THREE

  THE LONG RUN

  CHAPTER XIII

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC MARCH 16, 405 CITY OF CORYNTHE, PETRON

  KIGALI SHOULD HAVE KNOWN that it would take the Imperials nearly a full day to get their shit organized. Jessica and Torsten had been able to move quickly enough, throwing together clothes and personal supplies into a couple of bags and meeting him at the starport.

  He wondered how serious those two had been about eloping, as many times as they had half-jokingly threatened it. Or maybe had a surprise honeymoon planned and had forgotten to mention it to everyone else.

  Jessica just might have.

  Aki was
aft, supervising a team of stevedores loading the cargo bays as full as they could stuff things. From the screens he had on the bridge, that involved emptying larger boxes so as to be able to use every cubic centimeter back there.

  Kigali had been surprised when Aki resigned her commission at the same time he did and asked to join him on his explorations of the galaxy. But he had been her only Command Centurion, across the entirety of her twenty-years-service career, from a bumbling Landsman all the way up to Centurion and his Second Officer, behind only Arsen Lam, now off commanding CA-264 somewhere.

  He didn’t think she had romantic intentions. Kigali really didn’t even like women that much, although he wasn’t a purist or anything. But she didn’t seem that into men, either. In the end, they had just served together as friends. She made an excellent First Mate for the Private Service Explorer Olivier Janguo, named for the man who had given mankind the galaxy by inventing the first commercial stardrive on Earth.

  On a second screen, Kigali watched a small limousine approach, with Imperial markings. Em got out as the vehicle grounded, wearing civilian clothing rather than a uniform for the first time Tomas could remember. Em even pulled his own travel bag from the back seat before waving off the vehicle and approaching the forward boarding ramp.

  Tomas popped open the hatch from where he sat on the bridge and rose to go back and meet the man.

  “Em,” he said as the man entered. “I’ve got you in the third cabin, which you’ll have to yourself next to Nils in Four, since I’m putting the lovebirds together in One and Casey and Anna-Katherine in Two.”

  He led the man aft and opened the door.

  Em entered the cabin and tossed his bag on the bunk.

  “We’ll meet them in orbit,” Em said. “Denis is already aboard and getting them organized. Casey will be moody and snappish for a while, but that’s her being separated from Vo. We don’t have space for him and the medics he will need, so she won’t see him for too long.”

  “Understood, Grand Admiral,” Tomas nodded. “Probably get some damned good music out of it, then.”

  “No doubt,” Em said. “How soon until we can launch?”

  “Just waiting on Aki aft and the last of the supplies.”

  “Let Denis know, then,” Em said in a harsher voice. “They’ll be sending down an escort for us, just in case Chavarría decides to do something monumentally stupid, not that I suspect her of breaking our signals encryption, but better safe.”

  “Even if she tried, there would be surprises in her life,” Kigali said, heading back forward with the man trailing. “Not being armed and not being at risk are two different things, Em, and Bedrov took that into account. Not only are we light, but we’ve got all sorts of extras.”

  He rapped on Jessica’s hatch as he passed, and then Kasum’s. Both opened a few moments later.

  “Fall in,” Kigali called over his shoulder. “We’re about to lift.”

  The bridge was compact, as Bedrov always designed them. Because the ship was intended to land on planets, two stations sat side by side forward, rather than facing each other, so they could watch through the forward portal. Em, Nils, Jessica, and Torsten took up jumpseats about the edge of the room, put there specifically to turn the bridge into a conference room.

  “Aki, we’re all aboard here,” Kigali opened a line aft. “What’s your status?”

  “Last box breaking down now,” she replied. “We’ll be closed up in five minutes.”

  Tomas smiled. Part of the joy of being retired and in private service was that he could take all the money he had saved up or won, and do things exactly his way. CR-264 had been like that, but CA-264 had required a larger crew and was all about fighting.

  Olivier Janguo required a crew of three, but he had bumped that up to five when he found the right professionals, just to be safe. In addition to he and Aki flying the ship, Tomas had a pair of excellent engineers: Tasha and Doyle; and a Master Gardener named Devin in charge of all the hydroponics and the greenhouse. Best of all, most of them were better than competent cooks, for those times when he wanted a night off.

  Kigali grinned and opened a channel on the comm. He and Denis had set it up five minutes after the man had taken charge of his flag bridge on Valiant, nearly identical to the one from which he had commanded the squadrons on Vanguard. Denis’s face appeared on a small side screen.

  “Launch now,” Tomas said simply.

  “GunShips in motion,” Denis said, cutting the channel that quickly.

  “GunShips?” Em asked.

  “Queen’s Own has high orbit overhead,” Kigali turned and looked over a shoulder. “Fleet Carrier Titania is launching everything she has, and all the cruisers are dropping down into a big box for us to climb through. You brought ten Expeditionary Cruisers with you, Emmerich, both Escort and Longbow variants. Might as well take advantage of that. The only time we’re vulnerable right now is on the ground, and in flight until we can make JumpSpace. After that, nobody’s catching me.”

  That satisfied the man. Kigali wasn’t all that nervous, not with the amount of firepower he now had on call if somebody tried something stupid, but he would be carrying the Emperor shortly as well, in addition to the man Fourth in line to the throne if something happened to her.

  He could see the morons at Fleet Headquarters in Ladaux perhaps risking an open war right now.

  Tomas Kigali would just have to outfly those fools. Like he always did.

  The aft hatch closed with a thump solid enough he could feel it all the way forward. Aki joined them at almost a dead run, sliding into her seat as Tomas brought the engines fully on-line and checked everything.

  “Flight Control, this is Olivier Janguo, preparing for departure,” he said into the local radio.

  “All skies are cleared to the edge of the atmosphere, Olivier Janguo,” a man’s voice came over the line. One Tomas recognized.

  David Rodriguez was apparently supervising from the tower today. Just another measure of how seriously everyone took this.

  “Everyone had their potty breaks?” Tomas asked over his shoulder to general laughter. He opened the intercom. “All hands strap yourselves down tight.”

  Tomas looked over his shoulder to make sure the other four realized he was serious, gave everyone a count of ten, and lifted the ship clear of the pavement.

  He was not feeling utterly rude.

  However, the ship had been stripped down of all manner of extra mass, both in the design, and in the execution, so the engines were pushing nearly twenty percent less mass than they had been designed for.

  And Tomas Kigali was in a hurry.

  He gave the ship a few seconds to make sure everything was running clean, then pushed the throttle all the way to the stops. They broke the sound barrier while still less than one hundred meters off the deck, then started climbing at a fifteen degree attack angle.

  Then he pulled the controls back and stood the little ship on its ass. The frightening part, to anybody not expecting it, would be that he continued to accelerate this ship headed straight up. They could reach exceptional speeds as the atmosphere started to thin, but he would have backed off the power by then, so that they could rendezvous with the Heavy Dreadnaught and pick up the last two passengers.

  Hopefully, nothing in zu Wachturm’s bag would break when it rolled off the bed and fell into the aft wall of his cabin.

  Tomas set his ship on a slow roll, just so the scanners got a chance to look every direction. All the electronics were prepared to jam the hell out of anything trying to lock on him right now, but he held them back. No use letting the other guy know what he’s facing, is there?

  No missiles suddenly jumped up in pursuit, the only thing that could catch him now. No beams suddenly cut loose from either sky or ground to slam into the shields that were far too strong for a ship this small.

  Nothing. Except the screaming of the wind over his hull.

  Next stop: Casey.

  CHAPTER XIV

 
IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 183/03/16. IFV VALIANT, PETRON SYSTEM

  CASEY WATCHED Vo as he slept, unwilling to disturb him more than necessary. Except that she would be departing shortly. They would not see each other until most likely winter. She sighed, and that woke him.

  “How long have you been there?” he asked.

  “A few minutes,” Casey replied. “You needed the sleep.”

  “I’ll sleep tomorrow,” Vo said more firmly.

  He held out a hand and she rose from her chair to take it, surprised when he pulled her close enough to kiss her. Anna-Katherine watched silently from another corner of the room, eyes as big as saucers and blushing furiously, but unwilling to speak.

  “You’re supposed to rest,” she said, trying vainly to pull back from his enormous strength. “You’ve been shot.”

  “Not the first time,” Vo reminded her. “One of the reasons we wear armor.”

  “How many times have you been wounded, Vo?” Casey asked.

  It had not been a topic of conversation before. Perhaps it should have been.

  “This is the fourth time I’ve been shot,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes. “And I’ve been thrown from a horse hard enough to nearly break an arm and then there was the time a tree almost killed me on Thuringwell. Those are the only ones that probably count.”

  Casey had heard that last story, from no other than Hollis Dyson, Jessica’s infamous pilot known on both sides of the Imperial border as Gaucho. How Cayenne had gotten shot down at the end of the Thuringwell campaign and how Vo and Dashyl Mitja had been the ones that saved his ass from Imperial Security.

  Things like that were the reason that the woman was in Jessica’s custody right now, rather than being held by the 189th, like some of the others.

  Casey considered the situation and leaned down to kiss him again. With more emphasis this time. Enough so that Anna-Katherine drew in a breath to probably say something. Or maybe just blush again. Casey wasn’t going to open her eyes to check.