Petron

by Blaze Ward

  Or what Tadej Horvat and the Aquitaine Senate would do, once it was known that she was here.

  “Now, we must determine how to stop all of this stupidity and madness before it gets out of hand,” Casey finished the tale.

  “Your Most August Majesty, I have a small soul,” Cameron finally stopped pacing. He glowed with excitement as he looked at her. “I would not normally suggest such a course of action, given how delicate this situation has been in your absence, but I might offer one avenue for you to pursue, if you feel like making a mark on this Empire that won’t fade for a long time.”

  Casey leaned forward and listened to the man explain it. Bold. Audacious bordering on rude, even. The sort of thing that Kigali would have suggested, or even Alber’ d’Maine, another man willing to go for someone’s throat at the drop of a hat.

  She smiled.

  Yes, this would upset everyone’s apple cart.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 183/06/07. IFV VALIANT, STABIEL SYSTEM

  DENIS EYED the big man from his new spot on Valiant’s flag bridge. With Reif gone, Denis had moved into that chair, the one identical to his station back on Vanguard, once they had finally moved Jessica over to Indianapolis at the end.

  Vo ended up in Denis’s former station, looking strangely out of place in a green uniform, when everyone around him wore dark blue. But he was here.

  “You could have departed with Indi,” Denis continued an earlier conversation, partly for the benefit of the men around them on this flag bridge who hadn’t been in his office to listen.

  Vo shook his head and looked curiously around him. This might be the first time the man had set foot on a flag bridge, possibly ever but certainly in many years.

  “I could have, yes,” Vo finally said. “But my presence will help you convince people that Casey’s still here. No one will believe that she left me behind when she departed on Indianapolis, so that vessel must just be a courier, even if anybody noted that it raised the Imperial flag before they left. And you’ll need more actors, with what you have planned.”

  “I’m just glad Gunderson turned out to be such a natural as a haggler,” Denis said. “I would never have believed that he could get that much stuff staged and ready for us. I had expected to have to be here for another couple of weeks while we browbeat the Governor into selling us what we needed, in order to depart.”

  “That’s why I had you send him forward in Admiral Konnacht, Denis,” Vo nodded serenely. “Their next stop will be in Imperial space, and clear out on a fringe station that might not be able to feed twenty thousand surprise dinner guests.”

  “They’ll have time,” Denis smiled.

  He called up the sailing plans he had worked out earlier and transmitted them to the bridge as he opened a line to Captain Pitchford.

  “Bridge. Pitchford,” the man said, looking up.

  “Flag bridge. Jež,” Denis nodded to the man. “My boards show all ships green and ready to sail, Captain.”

  “My boards agree with yours, Admiral.”

  Denis nodded formally and turned to Everett.

  “Get me all the captains,” he said simply.

  Reif Kingston had picked an excellent officer to serve as his Flag Commander. Denis appreciated that the man handled things about as well as any he had known, save for perhaps Enej Zivkovic, back in the Jessica days.

  Quickly, Denis’s board came live with officers. All had probably just been waiting for the call, as Denis had kept them on a short leash.

  “As most of you are aware, Lincolnshire has now declared war on Salonnia,” Denis said sternly. “The messenger arrived in-system yesterday and the Governor has communicated everything to us, along with all the relevant verbiage from all the treaties.”

  That got a chuckle out of several of the men who had been privy to the message, as the Governor had sent it to every ship at once, unencrypted. Probably by mistake, but maybe to help nudge the other Captains into supporting a warlike footing.

  “We are duty bound to assist Salonnia in their time of need,” Denis continued, speaking for his eventual Court Martial, somewhere.

  He wasn’t sure who would have jurisdiction first when it came to that, but someone would, as he was in a messy position. A retired, possibly renegade Aquitaine Fleet Centurion, commanding an Imperial Fleet, in a potential war between an Aquitaine ally and a Fribourg client.

  “As such, I have laid in a sailing course for the fleet that will take us to a place from which I believe we will be able to greatly influence all the players involved, without necessarily escalating things out of control.”

  “This is not an escalation, sir?” one of the captains spoke what was probably on everyone’s minds.

  Denis didn’t bother asking who spoke. They all would have.

  “We will not escalate things, gentlemen,” Denis said. “But we will have their undivided attention, which I feel is what the situation demands at present. We will emerge at a very polite distance, from which we will be able to convey all appropriate signals without misunderstandings.”

  “And if they attack us?” Captain Antonov asked.

  As the commander of the other Flag Cruiser, Manchester, Antonov was feeling his way into a role as spokesman for the fleet, with Indianapolis gone. He was one that Em had considered iffy, like Dorchester, but being on the spot and watching the fleet slowly gird itself for war had brought about a change for the better in the man’s personality. Hopefully, a permanent one.

  “Considering the mass and firepower we have available, Captain, if they attack us, their force is either large enough to think they can win, or desperate enough to be a problem,” Denis said. “I will expect every ship and every sailor to comport themselves accordingly. In other words, we won’t start it, but if they do, I want them crushed, utterly. Any questions?”

  Denis went one by one across the faces on his screen. Most shook their heads, a few nodded, many scowled. Probably surprise on their part at what Denis had chosen for his first demonstration.

  It would certainly get everyone’s attention.

  “All vessels, this is Admiral of the Red Jež, aboard Vanguard. I have the flag,” Denis said formally. “All ahead standard and conform to Vanguard in line formation astern.”

  He took a deep breath and considered his place in the history books for this one.

  “Next stop: Hemera,” Denis said simply.

  CHAPTER XXXVI

  IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF JESSICA KELLER, QUEEN OF THE PIRATES: JUNE THE NINTH AT PETRON

  YAN STOOD in the window bay of the graving lock and watched workmen in suits swarm over the ship docked here for repair and upgrade.

  “Kid, I’ll give you points for craziness, but it’s only going to work once,” Pops murmured, standing beside him and speaking with a hint of admiration in his voice, like a proud father.

  “Only has to work once, Pops,” Yan replied. “Too damned expensive to use it more than the one time, anyway. Plus, hopefully by winterfall, we’ll have something better in store for those bastards. Sailing time home to get a bigger hammer will factor in heavily, if they decide to come back for more trouble.”

  “So what made you decide to go with Primary beams, anyway?” Pops grunted and stared at the work.

  In the dock just beyond the window, a heavy freighter, one of the big jobbies that normally carried gigatons of grain between worlds, was being refit as an armed civilian vessel. Even Yan wouldn’t dare call it a warship, but you had to build those monsters tough in order to haul so much mass around. It wasn’t like you had boxes that would support their own weight, so the bulkheads had to make up for it. That made them tough.

  And it would only work once, sure, because the next time an enemy fleet saw a ship this size moving to engage, they would shitstorm it with everything they had, mostly out of pure panic.

  Or spite.

  “Primaries are self-contained, Pops,” Yan finally replied, after the moment stretched. “Aim them and fire. We’ll
only get one salvo out of the ship, since I didn’t bother with reloading racks, same as I just welded launch rails around the outside of the hull. Three quarters of the missiles will be offensive, and the rest are for point defense, to supplement the four Type-1-Pulse turrets we are adding.”

  “Power, huh?” Pops nodded.

  “Always,” Yan agreed. “Filled one of the aft cargo bays with the new generator designs, and that will run the Type-1’s, but I’d have to completely gut the ship and rebuild it if I wanted anything heavier. Easier to scratch-build the successor.”

  “Think it will work?” Pops finally got around to the question that had been nagging Yan for weeks.

  The physics were there, according to the Bartender. Moirrey’s JumpMines should trap someone in RealSpace for long enough. A freighter sailing up and unleashing sixteen Primary beams into a single target should be pretty much like hitting a turkey fresh from the oven with a powered knife. Even a Heavy Dreadnaught would be hard pressed to not get killed by something like that incoming.

  And Yan had added enough escape pods to the freighter for three times the expected crew to be able to jettison, not knowing where people might be at the moment when the survivors cooked this goose in retaliation. And they probably would.

  Unsure what to say to Pops on whether it would work. Yan settled for a shrug.

  “Jessica likes to remind people that surprise occurs in the enemy commander’s mind,” Yan said. “Kinda banking on that here. Like you said, only works once.”

  “Then what?” Pops asked.

  “Then maybe the war’s over,” Yan shrugged again. “Maybe they come back for a second helping, and the new designs are starting to come online in enough force to matter. Maybe First Lord gets so pissed that they drop a full battle fleet into orbit and we all end up in a prison camp somewhere. I might have escape plans roughed out with Ainsley. We can always go back to being pirates.”

  Pops laughed.

  “Kid, I ain’t been a pirate in so long I’ve forgotten how,” he said. “But I agree with your design philosophy here. The age of the SnubFighter is done. At least for now.”

  “For now?” Yan turned to stare at the old man.

  “New generator design means that maybe we could build a heavier version of the E-2 you sold the Republic, Yan,” Pops said. “Fire a Type-3 beam like the old ones did with their wimpy, little Type-1, rather than having a long recharge cycle between shots. Heavier shielding means that a Type-1-Pulse won’t immediately kill it, so they have to start using Type-2-Pulse instead. Or pulse a Three.”

  “Pulse a Three?” Yan goggled.

  Why had he never thought of that before now?

  “The StarFlower I built for Galen brings three beams into alignment at a specific targeting distance,” Pops smiled sadly. “Easier than mounting a Type-4 on a ship that’s not supposed to fight dreadnaughts and the control mechanism lets them fire at individual targets if you don’t have a single opponent to punch.”

  “You asked Moirrey?” Yan was almost breathless with anticipation.

  “Have,” Pops turned to him and grinned. “She also had an idea based on something the Bartender told her about Carthage, but power was always the limiting factor. You might have solved it with your new generator designs.”

  “If we sacrifice long range sailing, we open up a lot of space for generators and batteries,” Yan prodded the man. “Flips the Expeditionary Cruiser logic on its head.”

  “It does,” Pops agreed, turning to face him with a hungry smile on his face. “Maybe we need to attach a big cargo shuttle to the exterior, like your half-ring Patrol Corvette? No, better, use two, one on each flank so the mass balances out.”

  “Why am I seeing a short, heavy 1-Ring MotherShip kind of design in my head?” Yan smiled at his oldest competition. “Heavier neck. Overabundance of generators at both ends.”

  “Four docking ports?” Pops asked. “Something heavy like Badger from Qin Lun docked in the two not carrying cargo?”

  “How small can we build a Pulse-3 mechanism and the requisite generators and batteries?” Yan asked. “That determines the new, Light GunShip design, if you add a crew compartment and engines. Swap out for cargo in two of them and give everybody short-range JumpSails so they can patrol and scout.”

  “You wanna dust off something, or tabula rasa this?” Pops seemed to pick up Yan’s excitement.

  They had long since passed the old days of being even friendly enemies. Nowadays, Pops treated him like Cho’s cousin or something. Family.

  “Let’s grab Moirrey and Dina and go visit the Bartender,” Yan said. “If Galen and Uly are available, bring them as well.”

  “Why them?” Pops asked.

  “Dunno,” Yan shrugged, turning to take one last look at the behemoth he hoped would get Corynthe through the first round of stupid, when Aquitaine finally decided to do something. Lincolnshire didn’t have a fleet capable of even fighting a two-front war, let alone raiding deep into Corynthe, so it would have to be a Republic formation, if they came.

  Yan was willing to grant that Aquitaine might decide to ignore Petron. He would offer someone about the same odds as himself personally turning into the Ishtar Bunny, but one should never assume that your enemy will do the polite thing.

  But if he had six to twelve months, he could revolutionize naval warfare. Again.

  And the best part? Nobody was gonna see this coming.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC JUNE 11, 405 CA CYRUS, GRANTHAM

  PHIL SMILED as he sat in his office off Cyrus’s bridge and read the latest mail packets.

  From Stabiel, Phil had brought his squadron back to Grantham. Even in one-sided engagements like that, things broke and wore out. Plus, all of these ships were older hulls, so maintenance was a constant battle against entropy.

  On the brighter side of things, he hadn’t lost anybody, and the sailing had been clean both directions. The strike at Stabiel had been an absolute success, as well.

  Message delivered.

  On the negative side of the ledger, Lincolnshire had gone ahead and declared war on Salonnia, but the message hadn’t arrived here in time for Phil to do something about it while he was out there. Stabiel might have been seriously hurt, had he been instructed to get mean.

  But it gave his crews time to go ahead and handle all those little tasks that had may have been put off, when peacetime budgets were tighter. Lincolnshire was handling much of the costs of his squadron operating, and notes from Naval Headquarters suggested that he would be getting some help in the form of newer Aquitaine squadrons on this frontier shortly.

  Cyrus was ready to sail now, and Ishfahan would be ready in twelve hours, the last of his ships to load and complete repairs.

  The latest packet from Governor Chavarría’s spies suggested that things would be getting interesting, as he read notes compiled from someone’s espionage service, sanitized to remove all clues about who knew what, and boiled down.

  He reread the news, cursing quietly under his breath and glad that he was alone in his office.

  The Imperial Fleet carrying Karl VIII and Grand Admiral zu Wachturm had been confirmed at Tadasuni. A scout had appeared at Stabiel, confirming the probable flight-path of the vessels returning to Imperial space. That all made perfect sense, from a sailing perspective.

  The timing of everything stank though, as Phil flipped back and forth across all his notes and reviewed things in a dozen different places. He had been ordered to hit Stabiel, specifically, with a demonstration raid on an exceedingly tight timeline. And Lincolnshire’s government had gone ahead and declared war while he was in transit, out of contact. And now an Aquitaine squadron would be arriving in-system here about the time his team was ready to depart. His new orders were to make for Hemera, which just happened to be the single, closest Republic star system to Stabiel, as far as operating bases went.

  Wouldn’t it make more sense to hold at Grantham, where an Imperial reprisal raid would be
expected to hit? Phil couldn’t stop any Expeditionary-class vessels from running rampant, but he was expecting his own help, a First Centurion with his own Expeditionary squadron, although not one including the veterans of the Buran War.

  As far as Phil knew, VI Ferrata and VI Victrix were part of Home Fleet now. Should have been attached to First War Fleet, but he wasn’t privy to Petia’s thought processes.

  Hemera as a new base for Cyrus only made sense if Aquitaine was about to declare war as well, and wanted to slip a raiding-cruiser squadron into Imperial space ahead of the Emperor’s Fleet, to try to slow them down as they made for St. Legier.

  While not the dumbest thing Phil had ever heard of, it seemed to rate right up there. Had everyone gone utterly mad, to suddenly be getting into fights with neighbors that had just spent half a decade learning peace?

  Phil had helped Jessica Keller save the galaxy from a Sentient War Machine. That had come about as a result of Keller capturing Thuringwell and then saving the old Emperor, and the new one, from being overthrown.

  What in Hades name had gotten into his own government, that they would let things get out of hand like this? Had they slept through the last decade?

  The Stabiel raid should have been perfect to get Salonnia to behave, like sitting a misbehaving child in the corner in a time-out until they decided to act correctly again. Nothing more was needed.

  Instead, Lincolnshire had gone so completely overboard that they had a war with both Salonnia and Corynthe. They wouldn’t do that, not on their own. They had to have been prodded by someone.

  As a result, Aquitaine would have to step in to save their bacon. Fribourg would have to notice, and if Phil was raiding Imperial systems, rather than just their ally, they might escalate things as well.

  Was he looking at the start of a new General War? Back to the old days, when it was one-on-one with Fribourg at all times, trying to stave off conquest by pushing the envelope? Aquitaine had been losing, until Kasum managed to install Keller into the right place to reverse the momentum. Anyone with half a brain knew that.