Petron

by Blaze Ward

  He guessed the woman to be in her late twenties, yet. Seven years of Academy, rather than four, and a few years in service as a legal affairs officer, apparently good enough to be on a Founder-class Heavy Cruiser, so her competence was not going to be in doubt.

  And Phil Kosnett had sent her.

  Vo waited with several Imperial officers, representing security and his own legal affairs group. Victoria Ames was also at the far end of the short line to greet the woman.

  He knew when Velazquez saw Ames because her step stuttered just enough to be obvious.

  The lawyer walked right up anyway though, and saluted him formally. The two men with her stayed back several paces and remained at attention.

  “General zu Arlo,” she said simply.

  Vo introduced his own six officers quickly and led the outsiders to the medical bay. The doctor there was prepared when they stepped into the chamber. The lawyer was not.

  “What is the meaning of this?” Velazquez demanded.

  She didn’t get loud or harsh. Lawyers were like that, but she was also expecting to meet the prisoners.

  In good time.

  “Because the Republic has already attempted to kill me once, Centurion, the three of you will undergo full medical evaluations by my doctors before you are allowed near my prisoners,” Vo growled at her, keeping his tone just barely in check. “I wouldn’t want you to have been infected with something that might be used to kill those men before they can be questioned in a formal court setting.”

  “Is that the opinion you have of your own people?” her voice got louder and angrier.

  The two men remained still and tried not to betray their nervousness, but Vo wasn’t fooled. He could smell their fear from this distance.

  “Would you like to see the scar on my shoulder from where my people shot me, Centurion?” Vo snarled down at her. “Is that what it will take to convince you that this isn’t a game? Lincolnshire has declared war on Salonnia and now Fribourg. Aquitaine might have as well, by this time. I’ve been here rather than where my own intelligence agencies can feed me updates regularly.”

  She did lean back in the face of his rage. Smart enough to finally realize that this wasn’t a court of law where the field of battle was equal. She was here because Vo was minimally willing to allow it. On his terms.

  Velazquez finally appreciated the thinness of the ice under her feet.

  “Noted, General,” she said, visibly forcing herself to relax. “And under protest.”

  “No,” Vo snapped. “You will accept it, or you will leave. Those are your choices, Centurion.”

  Vo noted that she was almost grinding her teeth as she stared up at him.

  “Accepted then, General zu Arlo.”

  “Very well,” Vo smiled and stepped back with a nod. “The doctor assures me that it will take less than half an hour to complete his tasks. Would you care to speak first with the prisoners at that point, or have dinner with myself and my staff, many of whom are witnesses to the events as well?”

  “I have read the report you compiled,” Velazquez said, already starting to pull her outer tunic up and over her head, to stand there in her undershirt. “With your permission, I will start with the prisoners, and then your people.”

  “I will see you and your team in a few hours, then, Centurion,” Vo said. “Please let the doctor or Centurion Ames here know of any dietary restrictions we should plan for.”

  Vo left at that point, leaving Ames in charge of Colton and Vladimir, Cutlass Ten’s Draconarius and Cornicen respectively. Standard-bearer and Radioman. He wasn’t worried about a Republic lawyer causing them any trouble.

  And he was really looking forward to his chance to grind salt into the open wound that woman lawyer would be suffering when she was done with his prisoners.

  CHAPTER XLVII

  IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 183/06/22. IFV VALIANT, HEMERA SYSTEM

  SHE HAD MET other women officers wearing the black and green of the Republic of Aquitaine Navy, but those had been allies, so Victoria wasn’t entirely sure how to approach this one.

  Centurion Andrea Velazquez. A fleet lawyer, rather than a warrior. Victoria had absorbed enough of the disdain Cutlass Force generally felt for what they dismissed as Support Troops, but Victoria had studied a broader and deeper curriculum than the men she now commanded.

  Warriors were fine and dandy, but didn’t amount to much of anything without truck drivers delivering supplies and spare parts. Without mechanics and armorers capable of keeping your gear ready to fight.

  Or lawyers indoctrinated in the Laws of Warfare and how troops in the field were supposed to behave, even when fighting for their lives.

  Hans Danville would never have anything but contempt for such a woman as this one, but he was an enlisted soldier to his bones, and Victoria had come to understand what zu Arlo meant when he wanted her to grow up and be the kind of officer that could lead these men.

  So she was escorting the woman. They were of a close enough size that rather than put Centurion Velazquez into baggy, Imperial blues as the two men were now wearing, Victoria had called Iakov to bring something for the woman. That had seemed to break some of Velazquez’s icy frigidity as well, so now they were walking aft to where the two prisoners were held, and doing so in at least a professional setting, rather than Velazquez being treated almost as a third prisoner herself. That had been an option forty minutes ago.

  The two men, the first apparently Kosnett’s Flag Centurion and the second being an enlisted Yeoman with legal training who served under Velazquez, wore Imperial uniforms without any IDs or badges, and looked almost like younger brothers wearing the older brother’s uniform as they walked behind the two women. It didn’t help that the men of Cutlass Ten trailed the group ominously.

  All of them, except zu Arlo.

  Victoria led the lawyer to a large conference room. The two prisoners were already seated, handcuffed and thin in their gray jumpsuits. Six jailers lined the wall behind them.

  Victoria took the seat on the left end of this side of the table and gestured Velazquez to sit next to her, with the two men beyond that.

  Cutlass Ten lined the side walls, looking grim and lethal. Nobody wore an obvious weapon on their hip, but Victoria knew at least three of them had more than two knives secreted about their person.

  As did she.

  “As General zu Arlo is unwilling to allow you to bring any personal equipment into this chamber, he has instructed me to provide you with two recording devices,” Victoria said carefully, gesturing to Iakov, who set them on the conference table. “You will be allowed to keep them when you return to your vessel. In addition, a video recording of this meeting is being transmitted in real time to RAN Cyrus and the station orbiting Hemera. Questions, Centurion Velazquez?”

  “None for you, Centurion Ames,” the woman answered.

  Victoria could see the lie in her eyes, but now was not the time for the Republic officer to ask the first female officer in the history of Imperial Land Forces how she had come to be here. Victoria’s answer would have been easy enough: Be smarter than the men she served with, and at least as hard.

  Velazquez had the shorter of the two men, the Yeoman, confirm that both machines worked and recorded adequately, and then activated them and placed them in the middle of the table.

  Victoria could see the prison-gray pallor of the two men. Other sailors spent time under ultraviolet lights that kept them reasonably tanned. And had access to gym equipment to maintain their muscles.

  Andresson and Yamagura had been under strict isolation, in cells with hard frames that stuck out of the wall, temperature controls they could use because they didn’t get access to blankets, and just enough entertainment options on wall-screens not to go completely stir crazy.

  Solitary confinement for long stretches, with nobody to talk to but angry jailers, still did something to the soul. Admiral Jež might have promised them their lives, but Cutlass wasn’t so willing to forgive.

>   “This hearing is now in session,” Velazquez announced, once she took a deep breath. “The prisoners are identified as Garth Andresson and Naruhito Yamagura, is that correct?”

  Both men nodded, resting their cuffed hands on the table almost like twins.

  “I have reviewed a file that General zu Arlo provided, including interviews where you two men admit your culpability in attempting to assassinate the General,” Velazquez continued. “Both of you have given sworn testimony that the person who hired you, provided the weapons and funds, and gave you details about the General’s travel plans, you believe to be Governor Judit Chavarría, Palatine of the Aquitaine Senate and formerly Premier. Is that correct?”

  “It is,” Yamagura spoke up.

  The driver had always been the more vocal of the two. Victoria had originally put Andresson’s reticence down to shock at having been shot and nearly killed while being captured. But after he had healed sufficiently, it appeared that he was just a quiet person.

  Pirates weren’t known to be introspective, by nature, but not all of them she had met were loud braggarts. Just most.

  “Sri Andresson?” Velazquez prompted the man. “Do you have anything to add?”

  Victoria was shocked at the depth of pain suddenly visible in the man’s eyes when they came back from wherever it was that he had gone to in his mind. He drew a deep breath and turned his gaze to the lawyer.

  “Chavarría hired me to kill Vo zu Arlo,” he said plainly. “Presumably to die in the attempt, since she didn’t bother to explain to me how dangerous the General’s bodyguards are. I learned that the hard way. Eventually, they would find my old connections to Ian Zhao and use those as a context to blame rogue elements at Court.”

  “What are your connections to this Ian Zhao person?” Velazquez probed, apparently not making the connection to the famous, dead pirate.

  Victoria only did because zu Arlo had added a book by the Grand Admiral to her reading stack.

  Jessica Keller, Volume One.

  That tome had told her about the man who had been King of the Pirates for all of about ten minutes, after Arnulf Rodriguez had been assassinated. Before Keller took it away from him.

  “He was a second cousin, once removed,” Andresson explained. “He was also the man Jessica Keller killed when she took the throne in Petron.”

  Velazquez couldn’t suppress her flinch as she processed those words. Others might have missed it, but Victoria was paying close attention. As was probably most of Cutlass. At least everyone except the two of her soldiers Victoria had assigned to keep the other two men in line, the ones Velazquez had brought with her.

  “So you theorize that the attempt on zu Arlo’s life would be made to look like a Corynthe plot, in spite of the person you claim hired you?” The lawyer managed to get mostly back on track, a beat so short that the people watching from RAN Cyrus might have missed it.

  “Those were her words, Centurion,” Andresson replied, his voice suddenly finding some aspect of life in it.

  Anger could do that to a person.

  “So you expected to die in the attempt?” the lawyer leaned into her questioning.

  “It was a highly probable outcome, yes,” he said. “My last decade before this was not something I’m proud of. I lost my place when Ian died, and never found my footing shipboard again. Grounded. Petty crime. A few duels that kept me going.”

  “And now?” Velazquez asked.

  This was where Victoria had had to make a leap as well. But she had never faced the level of depression and apparent, personal failure that the doctors had diagnosed with the man.

  Her default in that moment had been pure rage.

  “Now I would like to survive, Centurion,” Andresson said after a moment. “To have a chance to start with a clean slate, having meditated on my sins for several months, first in a hospital bed, and then in a prison cell from which I might never yet emerge. The Imperials were willing to offer me the one thing that would cause me to talk. To tell my entire story, warts and all.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Compassion,” the man replied in a tone that somehow wasn’t defeat, even as it wasn’t triumph.

  Acceptance, Victoria guessed. She hadn’t spent enough time around the prisoners to judge them accurately, but she heard the ring of truth here.

  “Compassion?” the lawyer of course had to ask.

  It was probably an alien concept to the woman, but Victoria kept her commentary internal.

  The man nodded silently, obviously out of words from the look on his face.

  “And what have the Imperials promised you, Andresson?” Velazquez asked, expanding her voice so that the implications were clear to the entire room.

  The marines and soldiers bristled, but Victoria was the only officer in here. She saw where the woman was going.

  “A long stint in prison and the eventual chance at rehabilitation,” the attempted-assassin said. “As opposed to being executed as the sort of failure and fuckup I was a year ago when I got offered a chance to at least go out in a blaze of glory.”

  Velazquez flinched again. Not the answer she had been expecting.

  Too bad.

  “Gentlemen, do you have any other statements to make?” Velazquez asked a little less steadily than she had when she walked into this chamber.

  Both shook their heads.

  Victoria watched Velazquez take a deep breath and turn her way. Victoria nodded.

  “This hearing is concluded,” the woman announced, reaching out herself to stop the two recorders.

  They watched the two prisoners being escorted out of the room, broken men shuffling along.

  She watched the lawyer take a deep breath.

  “Fleet Centurion, I will be joining the General and his staff for a working dinner after this, after which I will return to the station and make my preparations. Please contact me there with any questions, and I will check in when I depart IFV Valiant.”

  Victoria rose when the woman did. She and the rest of Cutlass departed, leaving two lost souls looking for hope and solace behind, where hopefully they would find it.

  Not her responsibility. She had to get this lawyer to zu Arlo next, and then make sure the woman got home safe.

  CHAPTER XLVIII

  ENGINEERING STATUS: optimal

  Weapon status: this platform is unarmed

  Power supplies: batteries full. Induction systems optimal

  Hardware status: Lord of Tiki projection optimal, language deviations over time adjusted for and stored internally. Seventeen working languages fluencies now available.

  Memory status: 37% full with stable backups and off-site networking allowed

  * * *

  THE LORD OF TIKI had never been around children. Earth Alliance Sentient Combatant Carthage had been no place for such crew, especially not in light of the war that had doomed humanity, at least as far as he had known at the time.

  Dina Kermode-Wolanski was now six weeks old, and slept most of the time, except when she woke hungry and needed to be fed and bounced. The Bartender looked forward to actually knowing someone across the whole span of their life, as a way of better understanding humans in general and the folks of the modern age in particular.

  Assuming nobody took exception to a god living among them and decided to end his existence. There was always that risk, especially with Lady Emperor Casey.

  Right now, the infant was asleep in a crib set up in a corner under the television he had normally programmed to show old rugby and football matches. For quietness sake, he had turned the screen off and was playing soothing music in the background to help little Dina sleep.

  Two relative strangers had accompanied the threesome the Bartender tended to think of as the Troublemakers. At least Yan, Pops, and Lady Moirrey were working to make Corynthe a better place. The rest of the galaxy might go to hell, but he could always rebuild things from here, with the added benefit of being way the hell out beyond everything.

  St
anding on the Cliffs of Darkness, as Bedrov had once described his home, even if the man had lied about the coordinates.

  Carthage would have forgiven the pirate, given the circumstances, so the Bartender did.

  Thus, Galen Estevan and Uly Larionov had joined the conversation today. Larionov, the older, was Comptroller of the Crown of Corynthe, so the man responsible for Queen Jessica’s finances. And the person who would actually write checks when it got to that.

  Estevan, the younger man, was apparently Larionov’s nephew-in-law, married to Uly’s niece, Kari. From the bits and pieces the Bartender had been able to gather, Estevan was another in a long, family line of pirates from this section of the galaxy, but much more successful, having commanded a personally-commissioned warship in Queen Jessica’s service, as well as accompanying her on more than one long-term trade mission into the galactic interior.

  Given the man’s relative youth, the Bartender assumed that Larionov was grooming him to a role in Queen Jessica’s government at some future date, or perhaps when Regent David finally assumed power for good.

  Either way, the man would have a powerful opinion on the Bartender’s life for the next thirty or forty years, if he chose. At least he had a good palate for beer, having brought with him a cardboard carrier of six beer bottles containing a rather malty double bok that the Bartender wished he could have served aboard Carthage.

  After analyzing the chemical makeup of the beer, he had added a new tap to his visualization of the bar, programming it to deliver a mid-cask pour of Khan of the Mongols in honor of the bottle on the bar beside him.

  Lady Moirrey looked better than she had in several months, so the Bartender assumed that the stress of the birth and the newborn was lessening. Or perhaps the mission to create new tools of death and destruction had sharpened her focus.