by Blaze Ward
“Do you have another idea?” Vo asked.
“Do you think Fribourg should complete the conquest of Aquitaine, zu Arlo?” Denis snapped. “Until we came along, that was the expected outcome, an Empire that eventually butted up against Lincolnshire and slowly absorbed them as well in another century or two. Tom and Casey have given Jessica the tools to punish Lincolnshire. You have the might to do the same to Salonnia. Where does it end?”
Vo and Tom both blew out heavy breaths, almost in unison. He could see now why Jessica had kept Denis as her right hand for so long.
Why Casey called this man Uncle.
Denis Jež was a deep thinker. He was beyond strategy now and instead studying the arc of empires, with an understanding as to how to shape them. And a willingness to challenge Tom Provst and Vo zu Arlo when he thought they were wrong.
Tom could suddenly see the future playing out in front of them, branching this way and that, with major end points like the Republic of Fribourg or Imperial Aquitaine. Denis was right.
Tom glanced at Vo and shared a moment of pure truth.
“What would you suggest?” Vo asked in a softer tone.
“Concision,” Denis replied. “Concise. Precise. Measured. And sure as hell don’t bring down Salonnia until we know what happens with Aquitaine and Lincolnshire. This frontier needs to be held as a way of stabilizing the rest. Go after one Syndicate and arrest everyone, maybe, but ignore the rest or warn them to clean up their act before you have to do it for them.”
“And Lincolnshire?” Tom asked.
“You think Jessica’s going to play nice?” Denis sneered. “My only question is whether or not Aquitaine has to dump all of Second and Third War Fleets into the fray to defend some of those places. Or if they decide to go after Petron instead.”
“She won’t be there,” Vo pointed out.
“No, but David is,” Denis said. “If he falls, Jess stops being Queen in anything but name. If you really wanted to rattle cages, I’d drop all or most of this fleet onto someplace like Grantham or Tilou and sweep aside the defenders without damaging anything else. Those people declared war on Fribourg, so they can’t complain that you actually decided to fight.”
“And when the RAN shows up to chase us off?” Tom asked.
“Let them,” Denis shrugged. “Transmit the packet in every system we cross, and to every fleet we encounter. Stay defensive against Aquitaine. If they get really stupid, you’ll have ended up stretching them so thin out here that they’ll have to pull forces from Home Fleet or First War Fleet, and that’s the Fribourg frontier, if Casey and Em decide they’ve had enough of the provocations.”
“Whoes side are you on, Denis?” Vo asked with a smile. “Really?”
“A year ago, I was fully retired and trying to figure out what to do with the rest of my life, Vo,” he nodded. “I could have gone back to Anameleck Prime and been fine on a couple of corporate boards as a figurehead. Jessica offered me a place on Petron. Casey offered me a Duchy in Fribourg. I want this war to be over with a minimal amount of stupid, but I want Aquitaine to lose this one, because they’ve betrayed me and everything I just spent more than twenty years fighting for, Vo.”
“Do you want to retire now, Denis?” Tom asked. “I’m here, so you could depart in good conscience.”
“No,” Denis said flatly. “I promised Casey and Em that I would do this thing. With you here in command, I can put my flag on Titania and command her Flight Wing better than anybody else you’ve got. That’s good enough for me until everyone else grows up.”
“Vo?” Tom asked.
“I’m with Denis, Tom,” the big man nodded. “Let’s hammer this hard and make our point. Then I can go home to Casey, but she deserves a secure empire and allies.”
“Okay,” Tom nodded to the two men, extending his look to the other two as well, the quiet Imperials who had just watched the three of them rough out a campaign plan almost literally on a bar napkin. The kind that would no doubt be studied by historians and command schools for centuries. “If we smash Grantham and then Tilou, we should cut Lincolnshire in half, and be able to gather useful intelligence on what the Republic is doing. From there, a base on Corynthe becomes a possibility, or we can just keep raiding as long as we find freighters filled with food, or can blackmail planets to feed us. We won’t win this war, but we can damned sure make it easier for Jessica to. Denis, you’ll transfer your flag to the carrier. Vo will remain here. Everett, you’re now my Flag Commander, so we need to work on maneuver orders that get everyone close to Grantham.”
“What about Kosnett?” Everett asked, finally speaking up. “Since we left Hemera, he’s been out of sight.”
“No reports place him raiding friendly systems, so maybe he took Vo’s threat seriously and headed to protect Lincolnshire,” Tom said. “I have no idea what orders that man might have gotten, or how he interpreted them, but he gets a pass until he crosses a border or fires a beam at us. Any other questions?”
There were many, but none that could be asked right now. Too much fluid. Too much unknown.
And an Imperial battle fleet bigger than anything anybody else had to oppose them, if they really wanted to burn the walls down and salt the earth.
CHAPTER LX
DATE OF THE REPUBLIC SEPTEMBER 28, 405 FLEET COURIER, LADAUX
BECAUSE SHE WASN’T TRAVELING in a warship on a direct course, it had taken Andrea Velazquez nearly twice as long to get from Hemera to Fleet Headquarters in Ladaux. At least she had been able to avoid flying through Ramsey, which was where the forward squadrons were being controlled from.
Andrea wasn’t sure what would have happened had she been confronted by Governor Chavarría. The woman was not in her chain of command and could not legally give her orders, but the former Premier of the Aquitaine Senate also had access to spies and assassins and was apparently willing to live outside the bounds of ethical behavior, as well as possibly the letter of the law as well.
Knowing how laws and orders could be interpreted, Andrea had no doubts that one of her own peers in the JAG had issued an opinion somewhere along the line that the attempted assassination of General zu Arlo was completely legal under some false assumptions. Everything was always vague and gray, at least until such a time as you were drug into a Court of Law and made to swear an oath.
She looked up as the courier ship came in on final approach to the station. Raoul al-Salah, her Yeoman, was seated next to her and had already put everything away in a hard-sided case he kept chained to his wrist at all times, just as she did the same.
The look on the man’s face was one of barely-suppressed terror as the docking was complete and the seatbelt signs went out with a bing.
“You’ll be fine, Raoul,” she whispered. “At the very worst, you are following lawful orders given to you by several superior officers. I should be the only one that they burn if it comes to that.”
“Easy for you to say,” he murmured back. “What if they arrest us and make us just disappear?”
“Then I have no doubt Fleet Centurion Kosnett and General zu Arlo will make it a point to avenge us,” Andrea said quietly back. “If our government and fleet decide to throw all discipline and legality away, then they probably deserve it, too.”
Raoul grunted but fell silent, rising and walking up the aisle behind her as she made her way out of the ship and into the secured area where a group of security marines protected the station.
Andrea picked out the Command Centurion as he rose and studied her. She approached the man carefully, aware of Raoul’s misgivings, and all the men around them with guns, when the two of them were unarmed messengers.
If the explosive contents of their briefcases didn’t qualify.
She checked the man’s uniform badges automatically as she approached. He was wearing the bright green of Operations and the maroon of Command, but not the purple of Legal, so he wasn’t one of her people. His forgettable face suggested the man was an intelligence operative, but that
didn’t disqualify him from also working for the First Lord of the Fleet.
“Centurion Andrea Velazquez?” he asked as she stopped two meters away.
She nodded, holding the heavy case in one hand with extravagant fantasies of having to use it like a bludgeon to escape this room, if this turned into a trap. It was an idle fantasy. They would most likely stun her quickly and arrest her, but Andrea knew she was too keyed up right now.
“Command Centurion Ming,” the man introduced himself. “Representing the First Lord’s Office. I understand you have paperwork for me?”
“No,” she said simply. Firmly. “My orders from Fleet Centurion Kosnett were to place the contents directly into First Lord Naoumov’s hands, and then place myself at her disposal, once she had a chance to review them.”
He paused, staring at both of them as if he had X-ray vision and could see what they carried.
Or maybe read their souls.
“I see,” he finally said. “May I inquire as to why the First Lord must be bothered directly, Centurion?”
“I am an Officer of the Courts, Command Centurion,” she answered, pulling rank even on someone so much senior to her, if he didn’t represent the law. “The information I am conveying is sufficient, in my professional, legal opinion, for a grand jury to level indictments.”
Ming nodded carefully. Just the tiniest amount, but an acknowledgement. He might be a spy, but he obviously had a firm understanding of the law, as well.
“What manner of indictments, Centurion?” he asked carefully, aware of witnesses and legal precedent in the way she spoke.
“High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Command Centurion,” Andrea answered simply, pronouncing her own, special doom on the situation.
She stopped at that point. There was nothing else this man needed to know. In fact, any more was likely to make him as much an accessory as she and Raoul were.
The eyes got a little bigger for a moment. Anybody not staring might have missed it, but she was counting angels on the head of a pin, right now.
Ming glanced at her case and took a shallow breath. He mouthed the words back to her without ever breathing them into existence.
Andrea nodded, thinking thoughts about necks and crowns.
“Very well,” he said. “If the two of you would accompany me, I will convey you to the First Lord’s suite and arrange a security detail to protect you while you are on station.”
“Thank you,” Andrea said simply, aware that it could have gone any of a number of directions.
Might still. She still had to confront the dragon in the form of First Lord Petia Naoumov herself. Fleet Centurion Kosnett had been unwilling to do more that speculate on what would happen at that point.
But Andrea had sworn an oath. To the Lords of the Fleet. To the Law itself.
And to General zu Arlo.
Lawyers rarely had to face the sorts of life and death jeopardies that line officers took for granted, but today looked like it was going to be that day.
Andrea followed the spy deeper into the minotaur’s labyrinth.
CHAPTER LXI
IN THE TWELFTH YEAR OF JESSICA KELLER, QUEEN OF THE PIRATES: SEPTEMBER THE NINTH AT RAMSEY
JESSICA MISSED HAVING RAN Ballard as her scout. Or CP-406 and CS-405. Any of those ships could have snuck into this system quietly and scouted things out fully ahead of time, while she waited a light-year or so away in the darkness. Reif Kingston had done a pretty good job with his new crew of the Twenty-Seven boats, but they still weren’t the first team Jessica had gotten so spoiled by.
At the same time, that wasn’t First War Fleet down there protecting the system from invasion, either.
No, Ramsey was being protected by third tier forces, as she had expected. No doubt Judit and her military advisors had done the math and assigned probabilities around various scenarios, none of which involved a reflagged Imperial fleet flying here from clear off the game board.
Vo and Tom Provst would have proven irresistible as a force, but had planned to withdraw carefully to their own side of the border after threatening Hemera. She had not yet caught up with the results there to know how that turned out. Hell, nobody really knew what the other was doing in a situation like this. Capitals were weeks apart, and if you made sudden moves like Jessica was doing, you outran everything anybody else’s spies might do about it.
Corynthe might have fallen to a Lincolnshire assault by now, for all she knew. Or Aquitaine might have come to their senses and forced the fools on Ramsey below her to sue for peace and apologize to everyone.
Knowing Tad Horvat, Jessica doubted that latter, but those were the risks in this sort of battle. And she could always send along a personal apology later if she ended up doing all of this as a mere corsair, rather than as part of a legitimate military campaign.
She was, after all, a pirate queen.
Jessica looked up at Commander Li and smiled as everyone on her side checked in. T-243 had left their cargo pod at the rendezvous, along with both freighters that had been resupplying the squadron. That just left the warships now.
“Status?” she asked quietly.
After Vanguard and Auberon, it was weird to be standing close enough to her assistant to smell the bacon he’d for breakfast this morning.
“All green, Your Majesty,” Li smiled fiercely.
Jessica nodded and checked the boards one last time.
“Open a line to all ships,” she said, waiting for him to nod back at her. “First Pirate Fleet, this is Keller aboard Archangel. I have the flag. All hands to battle stations and prepare for JumpSpace. Targeting assignments have been laid in and will be adjusted as the defenders rally. Follow your commanders and everything will be fine. We have them outnumbered and outgunned. All ships conform to Archangel and begin accelerating. We will jump in thirty seconds from mark.”
She cut the line and looked around at the half dozen men making up her flag bridge. All relative strangers, fighting their first battle under her command, but Jessica Keller had been in their nightmares for more than a decade, and then their command structure. They would do the job, or she would ship them home and have Casey and Em send her out better warriors.
These men understood that basic threat. She would get her best out of them.
“So where do we suppose Aquitaine has staged their forces?” Li asked quietly.
“That depends on how angry Premier Horvat is at me for rebuffing his Palatine,” Jessica replied. “Technically, he should have sent a second courier with legal orders, which I might and might not have obeyed. At that point, it gets dicey. Does he just attack Petron, or send a third courier, after passing a law stripping me of my rights to serve as Queen? Since I’m retired from active duty, I have legal grounds not to immediately come back into service while I have the Senate’s permission to reign.”
“Will those people be able to defend Petron with you gone, Your Majesty?” Li asked carefully.
“Those people include four of the men and women who killed a god, Jakob,” Jessica replied. “I’m more frightened at what they might do if they got angry enough at Lincolnshire and Aquitaine.”
“Oh,” her Flag Commander blinked rapidly. “Right.”
Archangel jumped. Hopefully the rest of the force was right there with her and she could scour the skies of Ramsey clean.
Emergence. From cold water to warm in the blink of an eye.
“We’re being challenged by two different stations,” somebody called. “One is just about to drop below the horizon.”
“Ignore that one, other than to expect missiles and a flight wing from it shortly,” Jessica called back.
“Roger, Admiral,” the man said. “LWC Robert Fitzwalter is shifting to a combat setting and moving to challenge. Confirm five frigates moving into squadron formation with the catamaran. Fighter craft launching from both stations.”
“Archangel and T-243 will take on the catamaran,” Jessica confirmed. “War destroyers have the frigates and Kingston will engag
e the fighters for now. Everyone begin launching missiles at the frigates.”
One old battlecruiser might have been able to take on a war catamaran. And maybe not, considering how well Pops had designed the ship. With a battletug on her wing, it was a much less fair fight. The frigates would have been murder on a MotherShip assault, but today all those Type-2 beams required a captain to get to knife-fighting range with heavier warships.
Jessica had specifically not brought a carrier when Tom and Em offered her one. Ramsey’s defenses were almost perfectly designed to handle pirate carriers. Nobody but Aquitaine and Fribourg had main-line battle fleets to fight this sort of engagement out here.
At least until now.
Archangel opened fire with her Primaries as they came into range. Nearby, the battle pod slung on the back of T-243 did the same. Both ships were sailing slowly, rather than the sort of mad dash Jessica had done in the Expeditionary days, but nobody here had a Type-4 beam capable of ranging deep into the gravity well. This would be three titans hammering on each other with swords, where an excess of Imperial guns would eventually tell.
LWC Robert Fitzwalter cut loose with only a half dozen Type-3’s configured to shoot back at this range as the ship and her frigate consorts tried to maneuver closer. He had apparently set everything else for close-in work, which Jessica considered a planning failure, this deep behind lines.
Around the big ships, missiles began to fly in swarms. Two of the frigates sacrificed a Primary on their bow for a pair of tubes to go with the pair aft, so they lacked the sort of heavy firepower that might have helped right now.
Normally, that many missiles flying around would be a cause for concern, since her heavier ships were all older ones, lacking the Type-1-Pulse emplacements capable of knocking that many birds down, while the catamaran was so equipped. Today, Achterberg flew low and between the cruisers, using her own weapons and missiles defensively, like a proper escort. With Reif’s squadro, and all his Pulse beams engaging the nearer fighter squadron, Jessica could concentrate on the catamaran.
