by Blaze Ward
“You dare threaten me?” the old man half-stood.
“You dare threaten me?” Reinhard raged right back at him. He didn’t stand, but he had been expecting this performance today.
And he had fire and salt on his tongue.
“Ware this day, Hjördís!” The Duke of Trenga put his tea mug and saucer down, finished standing, and stomped out the door, slamming it open and closed behind him.
Several moments passed. No doubt, an angry Duke was berating Reinhard’s bewildered staff as he stomped the rest of the way out of the suite, en route back to his driver and personal vehicle, who would no doubt return that pompous, old man to the soothing comfort of the sorts of wealth and privilege a poor bookseller could only dream about.
Reinhard took a deep breath and considered his day. And his possible place in history, if things continued along this vein.
Fire and salt.
He pulled out his personal comm and opened a new message to the private number of Cameron Lara.
“It’s done.”
CHAPTER XXXI
IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 183/06/02. FLEET HEADQUARTERS, ABOVE ST. LEGIER
TOM LOOKED up as the hatch to his office opened without preamble and Charlie stepped in.
Furtive was the only world Tom could think of to describe the man right now, and Tom couldn’t think of a less accurate description of Captain Charles d’Noir, most of the time.
“Do I even want to know?” Tom finally asked after a few moments of silence.
“It gets you out of your office,” Charlie grinned wickedly.
For some reason, Tom didn’t really see that as a positive development.
“It didn’t come to me directly, whatever it was,” Tom noted dryly.
“Somebody asked that it be kept extra quiet,” Charlie nodded. “Person to person message, asking me to do something. Technically you, but he started with me.”
“He who?” Tom put his pen down and leaned back. For good measure, he closed the file and slid it into a drawer by his left knee.
“Tomas Kigali,” Charlie said innocently.
Tom stopped and looked at the man who had been his right hand for more than a decade.
“Repeat that?” he asked.
“Tomas Kigali,” Charlie’s grin got worse. “Aboard the Private Service Explorer Olivier Janguo.”
“That’s what I thought you said,” Tom nodded to himself grimly. “He was supposed to be at Petron for the wedding. Why is he here? No, better question: how did he get here?”
“He would like you to fly out in a shuttle, Tom,” Charlie nodded back. “You, personally, alone. To chat.”
“To chat.”
“Uh huh.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Tom rose and stepped around the desk.
Charlie stepped back and opened the hatch.
“That would spoil all the fun, Tom,” Charlie said.
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that?” Tom noted. “Should we be at red alert?”
“Nope,” Charlie at least got seriousness on his face, finally. “Kigali wants this to be a surprise. For everyone.”
Tom knew he wasn’t going to get anything more out of the man, but he trusted Charlie more than anybody, except Karoline or Em, so he could take the afternoon off and enjoy whatever chaos the arrival of Kigali under strictest secrecy entailed. He couldn’t imagine he would enjoy it, whatever it was, but Charlie was playing a quiet game.
Tom could do the same.
Turned out that Olivier Janguo had a standard docking airlock that would handle an Imperial shuttle without him having to drop into a softsuit to cross over. That improved Tom’s humor as he stepped out of his airlock and into Kigali’s. Because both systems were stable, the inner hatch could open, but didn’t.
“Tom, this is Aki Ridwana Ali,” a woman’s voice came over the line. “Could you go ahead and close your far hatch. We’re expecting that we’ll haul you back to the station from here, and that makes it easier.”
Or lets you kidnap me, but he recognized the woman as Kigali’s Pilot, back on CA-264. And Tom knew she had taken retirement at the same time Kigali had, although the two of them were more sister and brother than potential lovers.
Still, he was keeping a quiet sort of score today. Whatever turned out, it better be worth his time and distraction, because he had better ways to blow an afternoon. He could have taken this shuttle to the surface and gone to a vid or something with Karoline, for instance.
Tom Provst keyed the lock behind him and listened to it beep politely as it closed. When it thumped into place, the one before him started to open, also beeping. Tomas Kigali was standing there when it finally came to rest, tall, lean, and smiling like he had just pulled the greatest prank ever on God himself.
Kigali could be like that.
“Permission to come aboard?” Provst asked in a laconic tone better suited to the man in front of him.
“Welcome, Admiral,” Kigali grinned madly and gestured.
Inside, Kigali keyed the hatch and watched it with some interested while it sealed itself up.
“Aki, we’re solid here,” Kigali called out.
A few seconds passed and the ship thumped lightly as the shuttle unlocked and backed away immediately, so they must have gotten orders directly from Charlie.
Provst was still keeping score in his head.
“If you would be so kind as to join me in the kitchen, Tom?” Kigali nodded and headed aft.
Provst followed him, matching the taller man’s long strides through the clean, wide corridor. The architecture reminded him of Em’s fast courier design, so presumably someone like Bedrov or Nakamura had started there and done things to somehow make those fast couriers look like bulldogs next to whippets, even as the couriers did the same to most other ships.
He still wasn’t enjoying this day.
Kigali entered the galley and stepped to one side, shoulders moving like he was silently laughing. At what, Provst had no idea, until he stepped into the room and saw who was waiting for him.
Yup, he was gonna owe Charlie something big, mean, and definitely rude for his next birthday. That much was obvious.
Her Majesty rose, dressed in civilian clothes, as did the Grand Admiral. Nils Kasum was a massive surprise. But Jessica was the one that knocked Provst entirely off stride. She and Torsten were here.
Tom Provst did the math in his head. He turned to Kigali.
“What’s the new record?” he asked simply.
This was Kigali. The shape of the joke was suddenly evident.
“Seventy-six days and change,” the man grinned like a fiend.
Tom Provst nodded.
“How bad is it?” he asked as he turned back to the room, his natural gloom coming to the fore.
Tom could not think of any good reason that this group had just made a highest-speed-possible run from Petron to St. Legier, and done it in absolute secrecy.
“Sit, Tom,” Her Majesty gestured.
Everyone joined her, with Kigali across the way and Provst in between two of the people who had been his worst nightmares, at least a decade ago: Jessica Keller and Nils Kasum.
“What’s the state of St. Legier and the Empire?” Karl VIII asked in a serious voice that sounded two decades older than the woman was.
“Home Fleet is as solid as Gibraltar,” Provst replied. “We’ve spent nearly a year training as a grand formation, as well as war-gaming in squadron and battle fleets. Speaking of, where is yours?”
That last to Em, who had been in command of a full battle fleet last time they had talked.
“Denis Jež is bringing them home via Salonnia,” Em replied.
Well, shit. There weren’t any good reasons to do that. And a lot of bad ones.
“Noted,” Provst said, tabling that conversation for now. There would be other issues to solve, but he wasn’t sure how to yet. “Political situation down on the planet has gotten interesting. Did you drop out of JumpSpace at any
point between here and there?”
“We did not,” the Emperor said firmly. “Kigali had a point to make. Things happened at Petron and I needed to be here as fast as possible. Since we just did the impossible, we also wanted quiet. Kigali contacted Charlie d’Noir and asked a favor.”
“Charlie know the rest?” Provst asked The Navigator, gesturing to the others Kigali had brought home.
“He does not,” Kigali replied.
Provst nodded.
“Cameron Lara is almost as smart as you,” Provst turned to look past Jessica at Torsten Wald, sitting there quietly absorbing information, like he did. “And way more social. He’s been playing mean games with the rest of the government, trying to delay and deflect a campaign that Premier Horvat seems to be playing with the help of Magan Gerig, Duke of Bergelmir.”
“What kind of game?” Karl VIII asked in a sharp tone.
“Aquitaine submitted a treaty to the Dukes not long after you left,” Provst smiled grimly. “What Lara’s told me was that they apparently think they can approve it in the short term, get the populace of the Empire on their side, and then force you to accept it, when you arrived home in about five or six months. Boy, won’t they be surprised?“
“How much progress have they made?” she asked.
Tom Provst had never spent any significant time around Karl VII, her father, but her voice sounded just like him now. Hard, sharp, and incisive.
“Almost none,” Provst laughed. “Lara out-maneuvered those bastards pretty good.”
Tom liked the jolt of electricity that seemed to flow out of his body and shock everyone else at the table, to see them flinch and jump.
“How?” Karl VIII finally asked.
“He took Wald’s old decrees and apparently suggested to the House of the People that they should also have a voice in the decision-making process of a treaty,” Tom said with a chuckle. “So they did. The Dukes threw a fit and for the last several weeks the two houses have been in a pissing match over it, and nothing’s gotten done. Utterly paralyzed everyone. That might be a problem later, but everything Lara was trying to do was buy time, from what he told me. He bought enough, if you’re here. What happened in Corynthe that has you, here, now, in secret? Who do I need to kill?”
Tom Provst sat and quietly listened as Jessica told the story, with interjections from everyone else. The wedding he had missed. The idiots trying to kill Vo. That Aquitaine woman Ambassador, Chavarría and her mistaken power play with Jessica, Jež, and Kigali. And the fastest-ever run between these two capital worlds. Two days shy of the theoretical limit with modern technology.
Another Tom Kigali record for the ages.
“So now what?” Tom asked as Jessica got up to the present.
“Now I intend to kidnap the commander of local naval forces and fly him to the surface,” Kigali laughed back at him. “Everyone will assume I brought you several cases of brandy I picked up somewhere and that you don’t want to share with anyone else in the fleet. We’ll need a truck to haul us to the palace, again, full stealth mode, and then it’s weasels in the henhouse time.”
“Aquitaine really about to do something stupid, First Lord?” Tom turned to the man who had managed the entire war effort, of which Jessica was just the sword that brought the peace.
“Tadej Horvat seems intent to try, Admiral,” Kasum replied. “At least based on our conjecture, and what you’ve told us about events here. We may have to fight your old friends, Robbie and Alber’ at the least.”
“That will be a pity, sir,” Tom said. “The team that would kick their asses is currently with Denis. Wondering if we should send a bunch of supply ships downstream and stage Jež to hit them in the kidneys, if we needed to.”
“That’s one of the reasons we’re having this conversation in privacy, Admiral Provst,” Her Majesty said grimly. “It may come to that.”
CHAPTER XXXII
IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 183/06/04. IFV VALIANT, EDGE OF THE STABIEL SYSTEM
DENIS LOOKED around the flag bridge of Valiant and considered his options. Tadasuni had been in a panic by the time his fleet arrived, with the local commanders demanding that Denis do something to reinforce their pitiful security against other raids by Aquitaine.
He had responded, once he got more of the truth out of those men and women, by reminding them that they had started it. Although that probably wasn’t entirely true, at least given what he knew about Salonnia.
Not a nation proper, in the sense that Aquitaine or Fribourg were. Not even Lincolnshire. More like Corynthe, back in the bad old days when Denis had first arrived with Jessica to try to make those people behave.
There were borders on maps. Systems that owed nominal fealty to a central government and maybe even sent their taxes in on a semi-regular basis. But a lot of corruption layered over the top of that, if hidden in the shadows. Factions that owned governors and such. Civilian naval forces that were suspiciously well-armed. Raids against each other as often as those across borders, if not more frequent.
And an assassin that had finally been willing to talk.
The man didn’t know all of it, but with his driver, they had enough of the pieces. Once Denis convinced them that they might buy their lives with information, the hardest problem had been getting them to shut up.
He would blame Jessica for setting a bad example. She had captured a man on Ramsey, another local gangster with delusions that a couple of hired gunmen and slicked -back hair made him dangerous. At least until Navin’s marines got pissed enough to correct his silly assumptions on the matter.
That fool had bought his freedom with information, the kind that had fundamentally altered the future course of human history, as far as Denis was concerned. Sent Jessica to Sarmarsh IV and eventually Petron.
Casey would probably be pissed at what he had done, but not enough to chastise him publicly. And the most Em could do would be strip him back out of this uniform and send him home.
But Denis had the information he felt he needed. Corroborated by both men telling close enough stories, in spite of only seeing each other a time or two to be reassured that both were healthy. And, more importantly, cooperating with the mean bastard in a red jacket and the thinning red hair that was turning gray.
Admiral Denis Jež.
Prisoner’s Dilemma, a game as old as crime. If neither man sells out the other, both might get off scot free, or at least with minimal punishment. But if one rolls and the other doesn’t then somebody walks free and his buddy goes down hard. So, as with all honor among thieves, you convinced both men to talk, and rewarded them for it.
In the end, it really hadn’t been that surprising, where the trail ended. He had been in the room, watching it unfold.
Judit Chavarría.
The woman who had once sent Jessica Keller to a place named Thuringwell when the woman was Premier of the Aquitaine Senate. And a good enough friend of the current man, Horvat, that he used her as a spymaster. Pity she had hired men with a simple grudge against Jessica, rather than ideologues willing to die for their beliefs.
“Denis, we’re getting ready to jump down to close orbit,” Admiral Kingston spoke in a quiet tone that seemed calculated to just break his reverie. “zu Arlo has confirmed everything Roland Exeter told us at Tadasuni.”
Denis felt the ugly grumbles rise like a volcano of lava surfacing, burning itself outwards from his stomach and starting to reach for his limbs.
“Captain Pitchford,” Denis found the right button and opened a signal forward to the bridge. “You have the flag. Take us in and park us in a nice, south-polar orbit, out of everybody’s way. Then go to radio silence, talking on tight beam lasers only. Maybe someone won’t notice us.”
“Acknowledged, Admiral,” Yasuko said carefully, like he was unsure what Denis was up to.
Denis wasn’t sure either, but he had decisions to make.
“Reif, let’s go talk in my office,” Denis said in a quiet tone, mostly masking his emotions. Mostly. “Evere
tt, you join us.”
Denis led the two men into the space where he normally worked and locked the hatch behind them as they got seated. He took a deep breath and let it out, amazed that he wasn’t breathing fire like an angry dragon as he did.
Denis Jež wasn’t a man that got angry. Usually.
Reif and Everett were smart enough to remain perfectly still as he settled.
“Prudent naval tactics call for us to move more slowly through Salonnian space,” Denis began. “The risk is of us running into another raid, although I seriously doubt my old comrade Kosnett wants to try his luck with this fleet. The locals need to be reassured that Fribourg will not abandon them in their time of need, and other mushy irrelevancies.”
Reif nodded, unsure where Denis was headed. Everett might have been carved in alabaster.
“Another, more aggressive suggestion would be to break off squadrons, either to reinforce local systems for the time being, or to hit back across the border at Lincolnshire worlds presumably no better defended than Stabiel was,” Denis said. “If I was ignorant of what really happened on Petron, those would be the options I was exploring right now. Since we have confirmation now that Aquitaine was apparently behind the assassination attempt on zu Arlo, that opens other options, although I’m not feeling that vindictive.”
“That vindictive?” Reif asked.
“This fleet could command its local space anywhere except Anameleck Prime or Ladaux, Reif,” Denis said. “Nothing on the Cahllepp Frontier, last time I checked, could even particularly hinder us. All of Lincolnshire’s entire fleet in one place couldn’t. Nothing in Salonnia, either. So I have to consider what Jessica or Casey would do here, or want me to do, if they knew everything I did.”
Inside, he was slightly amazed at the phlegmatic words. But he’d known Jessica longer than just about anybody. And Casey referred to him publicly as Uncle. He could pretend that they were on his deck, issuing orders.
