“Captain Tanaka,” the squadron commander replied. “I received your message for Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh. He has moved the Twenty-Fifth Squadron forward as a pre-emptive defense measure. I take it Shadowed Currents was destroyed?”
“She was, sir.” Harriet swallowed. “By a Kanzi battleship.”
“A battleship,” Uan repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
“Report aboard my flagship as soon as you rendezvous with the fleet,” he ordered quickly. “Have your First Sword arrange for full replenishment of your munitions and fuel. You will meet with myself and Intelligence Echelon Lord Kal Mak.
“I apologize, but I suspect we will be sending you out again extremely quickly.”
#
With the exception of Squadron Lord Uan’s own staff, his flagship was entirely crewed by Ivida, another of the Imperial Races. Harriet was met by the Captain, a tall, hairless humanoid with double-jointed limbs and an immobile face.
“Welcome aboard Songs of Victory,” he greeted her with a strange hand gesture she guessed was welcoming. “I am Captain Vidus. Is there anything you need before you meet with the Lords? Food, drink?”
“I’m fine, Captain, but thank you,” she told him politely. She’d eaten before boarding the shuttle—she had a limited supply of Terran-compatible food aboard Hunter’s Horn. Here, all she would get would be Universal Protein.
“As you wish,” Vidus replied. “Follow me, Captain. Squadron Lord Uan will be ready for you by the time we get to his office. This is, after all, a super-battleship. You don’t get anywhere quickly aboard Songs.”
Evolution hadn’t given the Ivida a face capable of showing emotion, but there was something in his eyes that warned Harriet he was teasing her. Their sense of humor seemed to be coming along just fine.
“There’s a package on my shuttle,” she told him. “It’s the hardened data storage from Shadowed Currents. We only pulled enough to be sure of how she died, but I presume the Squadron Lord’s staff will be able to get more.”
“Indeed,” Vidus confirmed. “I will have it taken to our cryptography team. Shall we, Captain?”
#
Vidus led her into a small conference room where the two flag officers, one Pibo and one Indiri, were waiting for her. They were studying a holographic representation of this corner of the Imperium, starting at Kimar and stretching out to encompass the entire forty-light-year Kovius Treaty Zone around Sol.
“Ah, Captains, come in,” Uan told them. “Captain Tanaka, be known to Intelligence Echelon Lord Kal Mak. He is Fleet Lord Tan!Shallegh’s intelligence officer.”
“Echelon Lord.” Harriet bowed her head.
“The Fleet Lord has deployed forward to Alpha Centauri to provide close cover to the Sol system,” Kal Mak told her bluntly. “While we are not expecting an attack soon, as the sheer distance involved restricts the Kanzi’s options, the probability inside the next long-cycle is approaching unity.”
“That will mean war,” she objected.
“If Sol falls, yes,” Uan agreed. “If the attack is driven off, we will probably allow them to officially disavow the actions of whoever leads it. We were expecting it to be presented as a rogue operation by one of their Clans, but the involvement of capital ships…”
“I wanted to speak to you in detail and review the data from Shadowed Current’s sensors before we send a report to the Fleet Lord,” Mak said. “He has no ability to respond quickly, though the starcom allows us to keep him informed.”
“The destruction of Shadowed Currents adds to our concerns,” Uan continued. They gestured a gray arm toward the hologram.
“Every star flagged in red has seen a confirmed encounter between our ships and Kanzi scouts,” they told her. “Orange sections of space are the patrol routes of ships that didn’t return—we now have nine of those.”
Harriet studied the hologram. There’d been a lot of encounters. In fact…
“This looks like more like an active battlefront than a peacetime frontier,” she pointed out.
“I agree,” Uan replied with an exhalation that would have been a sigh in a human. “The Kanzi appear to be waging a quiet war along this section of the frontier, attempting to clear a path to conquer Sol.
“If they were to annex your homeworld, they would claim the Kovius Treaty Zone around it,” they continued. “Such would require us to allow the conquest to stand, which we would not.”
“Hence, war,” Kal Mak confirmed. “Almost as dangerous as the presence of capital ships, however, is that we appear to have confirmed the presence of a stealth-screened ship in the region.”
“A stealth screen?” Harriet asked slowly. She didn’t think something like that was possible.
“A device the Core Powers insist does not exist,” the intelligence officer told her. “But is supposed to be able to not only conceal the presence of a vessel from ordinary sensors but also hide an interface drive from anomaly scanners.
“We have, over the centuries, acquired enough sensor data to at least be able to guess when such a ship was present in hindsight,” he continued. “Several of our ships appeared to have been ghosted by another vessel, which may contribute to how others were jumped.”
“Shadowed Currents was attacked by a ship that emerged within beam range of her,” Harriet reported. “A battleship.”
“It’s possible to achieve that simply by watching from the outer system and knowing the patrol pattern,” Uan told her. “But the fact that we believe there is a stealth ship in the area adds a new layer of concern.”
“If the Kanzi have developed that technology, the risks are severe,” Kal Mak said. “While my understanding is that the stealth screen renders a shield unusable, facing a war where the Kanzi get the first strike in every battle does not appeal.”
“You said you might have to send me out again?” Harriet asked. “What do you need of me?”
Unspoken was the question of “Why my ship?”
“We’ve only briefed a small number of our captains on the Fleet Lord’s contingency plans,” Kal Mak told her. “Captain Vidus here is one of the few left in Kimar who know where Tan!Shallegh went.
“Since you were briefed on the contingency plans to pass them on to Duchess Bond, you knew the forward deployment to Alpha Centauri was possible. You’ve also demonstrated exemplary judgment on when the Fleet Lord needs to know something.”
“Even assuming that we’re not looking at a true Theocracy Navy deployment, it is unlikely there is only one battleship wandering around,” Uan concluded. “They can’t go far from their support bases, either.
“If there were logistics ships or permanent facilities in the system where Shadowed Currents died, you’d have seen them. That rules out that system as a base but doesn’t reduce the potential bases by much.”
Harriet was studying the map.
“They’re likely inside the Kovius zone,” she said quietly. “And near where we’re losing ships.”
“Agreed,” Kal Mak said. “That leaves three high likelihood systems, Captain Tanaka. Three systems we want you to scout as stealthily as possible.”
Three systems lit up in green on the hologram.
“Depending on the currents, those could be as much as four five-cycles away,” she told them.
“Our maps of hyperspace in those areas are incomplete,” the intelligence officer replied, “but our estimate would be twenty-one cycles to the operating area and a minimum of fifteen to sweep the systems.”
With the return flight, over fifty days back in the field.
“My people are starting to get ragged,” she warned them. “Some kind of leave is in order, not another quarter-long-cycle back in space.”
“We can spare a cycle here for leave, but we need you to deploy as quickly as possible,” Uan told her. “The safety of the Sol system may depend on it.”
The Pibo neuter did not, she noted, point out that Sol was her homeworld.
“I need to send my entire crew on leave
for two cycles,” she insisted. “Anything less and we could easily be risking their safety.”
“Very well,” Uan allowed, a tone to their voice she thought might be approval—even with translators, it was hard to tell.
“Move Hunter’s Horn into the center of the fleet and take her into full stand-down,” they ordered. “That will allow your entire crew to enjoy the leave. And, Captain?”
“Yes, Squadron Lord?”
“Make sure you take the time yourself,” Uan ordered. “You need to be as fresh as your crew.”
#
Chapter 34
Both the joy and the frustration of being in a relationship with Elon Casimir was not being quite sure what the man was going to be doing on a day-to-day basis. He was the CEO of a megacorporation and lived and breathed long-term planning…and insisted on keeping his day-to-day schedule as flexible as possible.
Knowing him well helped.
Annette wasn’t particularly surprised when, less than ten minutes after the Indiri delegation and their ship jumped through their portal into hyperspace, her security informed her that Elon’s shuttle was on approach.
She continued to work through the ever-growing pile of issues that needed the direct touch of the Duchess of Terra. Today’s theme seemed to be roads—repairing old ones, building new ones, arguing over costs for already-half-built ones…
Her rapidly expanding planetary government was still tiny compared to even the governments of the individual old US states. They could absorb new people only so quickly, and the lack of so many of the previous tiers of government was a continuing headache.
Many of those suddenly unemployed people were ending up in the new government, but only if they could handle the new structure and culture. Annette refused to have new regional structures take shape; with modern tech and a unified system, they could run the entire planet with a centralized structure supporting small local teams.
Her plan was a very flat government, with much of the decision-making made at the city and town level. Several high-powered artificial intelligences were on their way to provide a force multiplier for her people, enabling them to avoid one-size-fits-all policies and pre-decided jurisdictions.
Time would tell if it would work, but she was too much of a small-town American to set out to create a stultifying, all-consuming government bureaucracy.
There had to be a balance, and no one in centuries had ever had a chance to rebuild things so completely as she had been forced to.
“I know your many and fierce guardians told you I was on my way,” Elon said from the door to her office. “Still working?”
“Running a planet,” she pointed out as she turned her attention to him. “It’s a bit time-consuming.”
“You have a bunch of good people in your Council,” he said, dropping a brown paper bag on the desk as he moved over to massage her shoulders.
“Yes, and when was the last time any of them worked less than a ten-hour day?” she asked.
“Touché, my dear.”
“The Duchy has barely existed for three months. We’ve hit the ground running, but it’s a monumental task before us.” She shook her head. “What’s in the bag?”
“Champagne, my dear Duchess,” Elon told her. “Finalized the last minutiae just before they left.”
“For?”
“The ‘Shared Current Project,’ as they called it,” he grinned. “Our currently unnamed three-party joint venture to upgrade the entire damned Imperial Navy with compressed-matter armor. One-third ownership each, but House Forel is underwriting half of both Nova’s and the Duchy of Terra’s initial investment, to be repaid from profits.”
“Worth celebrating,” she agreed, eyeing the paper bag.
“‘Worth celebrating,’ she says,” Elon snorted. “Annette, we just talked the Indiri into funding two thirds of the initial construction of what’s going to be one of the five largest shipbuilding complexes in the Imperium within twenty years.
“And that’s just talking armor,” he pointed out. “If the Navy agrees to buy Sword and Buckler, we’re looking at double the work, and an even more rapid expansion. Millions—tens of millions of jobs. The money to fund further R&D to stay the premier source of defensive technology for the Imperium for decades to come.
“You, Duchess Annette Bond, just won the economic future of all mankind. We’ll give the A!Tol their damned ships, and then we’ll leverage our way into being a core part of their empire, as essential as the Indiri to its survival and continuation.”
“You, Elon, just won that,” she pointed out. “Your negotiation. Your deal.”
“Even if we’d just been buying the battleships, I’m not sure we’d have got this deal,” he pointed out. “Certainly, if we didn’t have your privateer money, we couldn’t have pulled it off. We’d have had to sell the Indiri the damn matter-compression plant just to cover the eight ships we needed.
“Yeah, I finished the job, but you set it up, my love. Don’t sell yourself short.”
She laughed softly.
“This is all so far out of my expertise,” she noted. “Give me a command deck and an enemy, I’m fine. But economics and policy? Not my strengths.”
“Command and leadership are,” her lover pointed out. “For everything else, you picked the right people for your Council. Would you expect a Captain to be entirely familiar with every aspect of running her ship?”
“To a degree, yes,” she told him. “Which I have not achieved with this damned government.”
“Keep pointing the right people at the problems and pay attention to their solutions,” he suggested. “Right now, you’ve been even-handed enough for people to trust you. Every week, every day that we’re in power, we become more and more what people accept.”
“So, just hang on until people get bored?”
“The elections will help,” he replied. “Sooner or later, it’s going to leak that you could have just appointed everybody but limited yourself to the Duchy rep.”
“Not true,” she said. “I could have appointed the House of Races representative. All I could have done for the House of Worlds was—”
“Limit the franchise, limit who could run, control how the election was structured.” Elon ticked off points on his fingers. “Even inside the rules for that ‘fair and transparent’ requirement the A!Tol have, you could have made sure everyone we sent to the House was loyal to you first.”
She stared at him.
“I…I…no!” she concluded. “I guess I could have, yes, but that would have ruined the whole point!”
“Instead, you insisted on open, fair elections with the entire process from assembling the plans right now to the vote itself being as transparent as possible,” he agreed. “People haven’t missed that, you know. It’s buying you a lot of credit right now.”
“That isn’t why I did it.”
“Of course not.” Elon grinned at her. “You’re a straightforward, honest, military type. People know that and trust you for it. Give them time, and they’ll love you for it.”
“I don’t expect to be remembered with warm, fuzzy feelings,” Annette told him. “I expect to go down in history alongside Marshal Pétain.”
“Mmm. Still possible,” he agreed. “Unlikely, I think, unless we screw it up pretty badly. Maybe alongside Anson Jones.”
“Who the hell was he?” she demanded.
“Fourth and last President of the Republic of Texas, the architect of the annexation into the United States.”
“Huh,” Annette said. “So, you expect me to be a forgotten footnote, I take it?”
“You’re feeling morose tonight,” he pointed out. “I come alone, Morgan’s back home with Miss Wei, and bring champagne—and I’m cheering you up!
“Come, my love, let’s celebrate,” he told her, pulling the champagne from the bag. “To a long and successful partnership with the Indiri Deep Houses, even as they fund us becoming one of their biggest competitors!”
She laugh
ed and shook her head at him.
“The champagne glasses are in the kitchen,” she pointed out.
“I knew I forgot something!”
#
Chapter 35
Eleven days aboard a starship, however luxurious, could easily be a strain. Eleven days aboard a warship was definitely not anything most people would call a vacation.
Eleven days, however, actually getting to sleep in the same bed as his husband, with no more demands on his time but training himself and his two Troops of Ducal Guardsmen, was as close as James Wellesley had come to a vacation since before the annexation.
There was also a certain degree of lazing about he figured was due to him after three months living and breathing in Annette Bond’s shadow, making sure the Duchess of Earth was safe.
This meant he was lying in the bed in Captain Pat Kurzman’s quarters, watching one of the many recorded football games he’d missed during Operation Privateer—a year’s worth of even just English football was a lot to catch up on!—when his husband walked in and cruelly turned off the screen.
“We’re there?” he asked instead of crucifying the man. It was a matter of great self-control, the epitome of British stiff upper lip, truly.
“Punching the hyper portal in about ten minutes,” Pat told him. “This is your op, those sealed orders say. I figure you want to be on the bridge to see just how the Laians hid the station this time.”
“Fair… On the other hand, I know Manchester United won this game”—James gestured to the dull screen—“but I can’t for the life of me see how they turned it around. Think I can see the end?”
“Can you fast-forward through an hour of football, get in uniform, and meet me on the bridge in under ten minutes?” his husband asked sweetly.
“Now that you mention it…no.”
“Let’s get going, then.”
#
Duchess of Terra (Duchy of Terra Book 2) Page 23