EMPIRE: Warlord (EMPIRE SERIES Book 5)

by Richard F. Weyand

  His Excellency Baron Francis Schmitt-deVries:

  Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow.

  Fortney sent a message to higher, then commed the HMS Predator.

  The helicopter with the agricultural spray rig was a two-seater. Schmitt-deVries hung on for dear life as the pilot hurled the little machine across the countryside at its maximum speed. He hugged the ground, hoping to stay out of the sight of any kind of tracking device Henry might use. The purpose now was to get as far away from the location he had called in from as possible.

  The pilot put down briefly in the front yard of the farmhouse, and Schmitt-deVries jumped out, then the little machine leapt into the air and continued on its way for another hundred miles, hoping to confuse any followers.

  “What the hell is going on, Commander?” Gertrude Winger asked Robert Murphy as they ran for the shuttle lock.

  “Apparently my wife’s house guest is the surviving heir to the throne, if his rivals don’t kill him first. We’re supposed to lead the Marines there.”

  “There? Where?” Winger asked as she belted in to the pilot’s seat of the VIP shuttle.

  “He gave his location as ‘Codename Farmhouse.’”

  “Oh my God.”

  Murphy looked around the tiny cabin as he fumbled with the harness.

  “Wait! This isn’t a cargo shuttle. Can you fly this thing?”

  “It’s what we trained on.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “Long time. Hang on.”

  Winger released from the Predator and went to full acceleration immediately. The VIP shuttle was a modified Marine attack ship, with the small VIP cabin where the automated ordinance racks normally were. Murphy had gotten strapped in just in time. Five gravities of acceleration slammed him back in the seat, and the little ship hurtled toward the planet.

  Winger checked her scans, and two dozen Marine assault shuttles and three dozen Marine attack ships were charging after her.

  “C’mon, baby. Go, go, go!”

  Murphy looked at his screens.

  “Are they chasing us?”

  “No. They’re on our side.”

  She looked down at the screens again. Damn, that was a lot of firepower.

  “I think.”

  Murphy goggled at her and Winger grinned as the little ship rocketed toward the planet under war emergency power.

  She used her armrest keypad to type ‘Rock Falls’ into the destination field, then flipped the map over to Murphy’s screen.

  “Here. Find the farmhouse. I’ve never been there.”

  “All right.”

  Let’s see. They always went north out of town, on that road that curved around to the west, then the next north ...

  “Got it. Flagged.”

  “Roger that.”

  It was a tense flight, as the minutes stretched out, not knowing if they would be in time or not, with Winger pushing the machine as hard as she dared. They entered the atmosphere at hypersonic speed, using the fast little ship’s extendable ceramic-titanium forward nose shield to break a path through the air for the tiny shuttle. The assault shuttles behind her necessarily started to fall behind on re-entry, but the attack ships came in just as hard.

  Ten minutes out from the farmhouse she popped a green icon onto its location and broadcast it to the other ships. She dropped down in altitude and slowed to prepare for a landing in the big front yard of the house, while the attack ships overtook her and fanned out to set up multiple concentric shells of patrol against intruders.

  When the attack shuttles roared overhead and the VIP shuttle settled onto the lawn, Schmitt-deVries turned on his VR interface and opened himself up to receiving communications through the command net.

  Schmitt-deVries and all the other residents of the Walston house came out on the porch as the VIP shuttle touched down. The ship was radiating heat, and its forward shield, now retracted, still had a dull red glow after that tremendous plunge from orbit. As the crew waited for the ship to cool enough to exit it, two dozen Marine assault shuttles settled in a wide circle around the farmhouse, out in the fields, and the Marines began to set up a perimeter.

  “Sorry, about the crops, Mr. Walston,” Schmitt-deVries said. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Well, Your Highness, I guess you’ll have to take that up with my tenant. Garland General Grain.”

  Schmitt-deVries laughed.

  “I’m a major shareholder in G3, Mr. Walston. I guess I’ll have to recompense myself.”

  The kids stood on the porch, being held back by the watchful adults, but when Gertrude Winger and Rob Murphy exited the shuttle, there was no holding them back.

  “Mommy!”

  “Dad!”

  The four youngest ran forward to swarm their parents, with Matt holding back on the porch with the adults. Eventually Gertrude Winger and Rob Murphy walked up to the porch. They both snapped to attention in front of Schmitt-deVries and saluted.

  “We came as fast as we could, Your Highness,” Murphy, as the superior, said.

  “So I see. Well done, Commander Murphy. And you, Petty Officer Winger.”

  “Thank you, Sire.”

  “Please. Carry on with your welcoming party.”

  “Yes, Sire. Thank you, Sire.”

  While the reunited couples greeted each other properly, Schmitt-deVries got an incoming communication from Admiral Fortney. He took it in VR.

  “Yes, Admiral Fortney.”

  “Your Highness, we have four private shuttles inbound to your location, about half an hour out. No flight plan.”

  “Are they transponding, Admiral Fortney?”

  “No, Sire.”

  “Take them down, Admiral Fortney.”

  “Yes, Sire.”

  “And see if you can find my cousin, Henry Kurtz-deVries, and take him into custody.”

  “Yes, Sire. In the meantime, I think we should move you. For your own safety.”

  Schmitt-deVries was actually more worried about the safety of the family that had taken him in, but there was no sense troubling Fortney with that.

  “Very well, Admiral Fortney. I have a VIP shuttle and pilot here. I will be leaving presently. See to augmenting the security on my family estate at Falcon Ridge. You should probably run that through higher, and let them deal with it.”

  “Yes, Sire. Thank you, Sire.”

  Schmitt-deVries dropped out of VR and was simply enjoying the emotional reunions playing out on the porch between the oh-so-much-by-chance survivors of the destruction of Flower and the oh-so-much-by-chance survivors of the destruction of two-thirds of Garland’s Navy, when distant small explosions could be heard off to the south. Rob Murphy looked towards Schmitt-deVries in alarm.

  “My cousin’s erstwhile henchmen, arriving late to the party, Commander Murphy.”

  “But not by much, Sire.”

  “No, Commander Murphy. Your arrival was most propitiously expedited. Thank you again.”

  Murphy nodded and turned his attention back to his wife and children.

  “Petty Officer Winger.”

  “Yes, Sire?”

  “Do you think I could trouble you for one more small hop today?”

  “Of course, Sire.”

  “Fifteen minutes or so will be fine, Petty Officer. Then you can come back home for shore leave.”

  “Yes, Sire. Thank you, Sire.”

  Watching the multiple happy reunions, Schmitt-deVries’s tentative decision hardened in his mind.

  Time and past time to end this damned war, Schmitt-deVries thought.

  Reactions To Hadrian

  News reports about the attacks out of Annalia, Berinia, and Garland were initially spotty. All the news services’ local offices had been destroyed in the attacks, along with most of their staffs. Some of the reporters for local news outlets were out of the city with their VR crews and producers, covering local stories. They ventured to the sites of the explosions – or as close as they could safely get �
�� to file stories and VR of the sites. Additional footage was obtained from helicopter and drone flyovers of the devastation.

  The Imperial Press Office on Sintar issued a press release stating that, ‘After the planetary bombardment of Estvia by the governments of Annalia, Berinia, and Garland, Emperor Trajan determined it was necessary to eliminate their ability to carry out additional such attacks against planets of the Sintaran Empire. As they had unilaterally withdrawn from the protections of the Treaty of Earth with respect to Sintar, attacks were carried out against their ruling governments and military hierarchy. These operations were successfully concluded.’ Given how terse Imperial Press Office statements usually were, this amounted to a thesis dissertation. No questions were taken or interviews granted.

  The other governments in human space were also working with fragmentary news. All their ambassadors and foreign service staff assigned to the three foreign capitals were killed. Sintar had maintained its ambassadors and a skeleton staff in all the Alliance countries after the outbreak of hostilities, but had withdrawn its embassy staff from Annalia, Berinia, and Garland the week before the planetary strikes in protest of the attack on Estvia.

  Official reaction of the other governments in human space were to reiterate they had not violated the Treaty of Earth and considered it still binding on all parties insofar as they were concerned. The Democracy of Planets issued a statement regretting the ‘increase in severity’ of the military actions, and their targeting of civilian populations.

  Personal reaction outside of Sintar ranged from ‘The Emperor of Sintar is a real bastard’ to ‘What did they expect him to do?’ Personal reaction inside the Sintaran Empire was more uniform, along the lines of ‘That’ll teach ‘em,’ although some negative voices, especially among the punditry, were heard.

  King Francis II of Garland – the former Baron Francis Schmitt-deVries – had his hands full. An urgent item was the immediate relief of the injured in those areas outside the total-kill zone of the new Sintaran weapon. The effective range of the weapon was so large it had encompassed the entire capital city and its environs, so the actual numbers of the injured were relatively small. The Navy as a whole acknowledged his sovereignty, and he ordered them to focus their efforts on relief of the affected population. There was some pushback about defending against Sintar, but King Francis noted acerbically that, if they were to stop attacking Sintar, all indications were that Sintar would stop attacking them.

  King Francis’s second order of business was political. Of the several sector administrators in the kingdom – minor nobility all – some of them had initially thought this might be the time to split off from Garland into their own minor fiefdom. The new king arranged that his military leaders in each sector stop by to reassure the sector administrators all was well with the king’s command of the military and to offer them any assistance required to get through this difficult period. The underlying message was understood, and things calmed down on that score.

  The sector administrators were also mollified by the increased scope of their powers under the new king. Garland had always been a ‘strong center’ structure, with the sector administrators subservient to the central bureaucracy. That bureaucracy was now gone, and the kingdom moved perforce to a more distributed administrative model.

  As far as the common people of Garland were concerned, they had never understood what the new king continuously called ‘King James’s War’ anyway. A lot of the cheaper consumer goods they could afford came from Sintar. More expensive local items were often inferior to the Sintaran imports. The whole idea of the seventy-five-hundred planet kingdom attacking the gigantic Sintaran Empire, whether in cahoots with others or not, had seemed crazy to them, and it had proved so in practice.

  The new king had also done a number of things to connect to his new subjects on a human level. He encouraged and participated in a human-interest news video of his hiding from the former king with commoners, and being rescued in the nick of time by the Navy and Marines. He was interviewed for the story, as were Lester Walston, Anita Murphy, and Gertrude Winger. Dick Winger had directed the project, and it had proven very popular on both VR and, more importantly, conventional video, which reached the common people.

  King Francis was lucky in another way. The kings of Garland had not wanted their shiny capital sullied with the mundane ins and outs of sector administration, so the capital sector of the kingdom – some one thousand planets centered around Garland itself – had its own administrative center, in the city of Blossom. He moved there now, declared it the new capital, and started to assemble a central government from among the sector administration and the survivors of the central government.

  These were King Francis’s concerns in order of time priority, but not in order of overall importance. He read through all the news he had missed while he was cut off from VR. Most of it was about the attack on Estvia, and Sintar’s retribution attacks against Annalia, Berinia, and Garland.

  But there was also the news of the apparently friendly annexation of Phalia and the Rim by Sintar. King Francis watched Queen Anne’s address to the people of Phalia announcing the annexation. He was especially intrigued by this bit: ‘Phalia will be a part of the Empire, and all Phalians will be citizens of the Empire, on an equal basis with the Empire’s other citizens.’

  The annexation of Pannia and Estvia by Sintar was one thing. Pannia and Estvia had not been belligerents in the Sintar-Alliance War. Phalia and the Rim, on the other hand, had been.

  After some thought, he sent another message to his old friend Ben Wheeler. He composed it carefully.

  Meals were always a raucous experience once the twins started eating at the table with their parents. Dunham and Peters both enjoyed the children’s stories and speculations and thoughts, and they tag-team prattled on about any number of things. When Saturday lunch – their big meal of the day – was winding down, Sean started militating for pool time, with Dee’s enthusiastic support. It was a beautiful day, and the pool was definitely on the schedule.

  Peters took Sean’s arm and held his dirty hand up between them.

  “OK. Pool. After you wash your hands. Both of you.”

  “Aw, Mom.”

  “Sean,” Dunham said, “did you hear your mother?”

  Sean looked abashed.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right,” Peters said. “Hands first.”

  “OK,” Dee said, and both kids ran from the room giggling and squealing.

  Peters knew the Imperial Guardsmen, standing as always in the corners of the room toward the door, would signal their childcare staff the children were on the way to their room to change.

  Dunham shook his head.

  “They sure do love the pool.”

  Peters was thoughtful, pushing crumbs around on her plate with her fork.

  “The initial reports indicate the total-fission weapon was successful.”

  “Yes. As expected.”

  Peters looked up at him.

  “Does that mean it’s finally over?”

  “I hope so. I get tired of killing innocent people because of someone else’s stupid decision.”

  “At least this time we got the decision makers,” Peters said.

  “Yes, along with a hundred million or so other people.”

  “Which included the bureaucracy they had gathered around them.”

  “There is that,” Dunham said. “But yes, I think it’s over, as long as the DP stays out of it.”

  “And what are the chances of that?”

  “Realistically? Not good.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Well, he’s gone and done it,” DP Prime Minister Harold Pinter said.

  “He sure has,” DP Foreign Minister Jules Morel said. “The Emperor doesn’t believe in half measures, that’s sure.”

  “I’m not sure what they expected him to do. Attacking Estvia was an act of insanity.”

  Morel and DP Defense Minister Pavel
Isaev both nodded.

  “Pavel, do we know what weapon they used?” Pinter asked. “Is this the same one as before?”

  “We’re not sure, Harold. We think so. I have been in touch with the assistant head of operations of the Annalian navy. Apparently he was on an inspection tour when the attack occurred. They’re still trying to get re-organized over there. But he did tell me the Navy commanders in Annalia orbit swear nothing got past them.”

  “Is that just covering their ass, do you think?”

  “I don’t think so. He said the sensor logs back them up. Which means the weapon came in in hyperspace.”

  “Inside their defenses? In hyperspace? Could it even survive that, Pavel?”

  “No. The question isn’t whether it survived or not, Harold. We know it couldn’t. The question is the manner in which it didn’t survive. That’s what we’re looking into.”

  “I see. That is, I think I see. It was destroyed when it dropped out of hyperspace, but rather more spectacularly than one might expect.”

  “That’s what we’re looking into. How to arrange the spectacularly part, that is.”

  “All right, Pavel. Well, keep us informed on progress there.”

  “Will do, Harold. Do you want us to do anything with regard to Annalia and Berinia yet?”

  “No. No, not yet.”

  “The opposition is howling about us not responding to the ‘Sintar crisis,’ Harold. They’re working up to a no-confidence vote.”

  “I know, Jules, I know. But there’s nothing positive to be done at this point, and the downside risks are horrific. Let’s just sit tight and see what happens next.”

  “All right, Harold. You’re the boss.”

  “For now, anyway,” Pinter said.

  Queen Anne and King Albert – now Sector Governor Anne Bowdoin and Sector Governor Albert Rottenburg, respectively – met in VR.

  “Well, you were right. King James is no longer among the living,” Rottenburg said.