by Blaze Ward
Denis entered as Marcelle withdrew. He had a serious look, which just threw Jessica further off-center. Denis was usually the calm anchor of the crew. Plus, he was wearing white, the day uniform of an Imperial Admiral, rather than his traditional black-and-green, so she had no idea what was coming.
It was likely more serious than office gossip and romances.
He sat. Studied her for several seconds.
“So I might be out of line,” he began, awkwardly. “But I also made a promise to the Grand Admiral, and that kind of eclipses the normal order of things.”
“Did you now, Admiral Jež?” she teased.
He was grinning, so she joined him.
“Emmerich instructed me, in no uncertain terms, to watch over you, Jessica,” Denis said. “To keep you safe and sane. He reinforced that when he came for Casey.”
“I see,” Jessica said as a placeholder, unsure of what the two men might have discussed.
“So I’m speaking as a friend, a colleague, and for your guardian angel,” Denis continued.
Jessica nodded. It was obvious Denis had worked himself up to this speech.
“We’re going to Yenisei,” he observed. “Scout, strike, withdraw. The classic maneuver of a strike carrier squadron. But we’re doing it so far behind enemy lines that we might set a new record, especially given our linear distance from Ladaux.”
Jessica just waited rather than speaking. Best not to betray her inner thoughts, whatever they might be.
“Plus, we’re doing it with a sledgehammer that might be big enough to fracture Samara,” Denis continued.
“And you’re here as the personal representative of the Grand Admiral,” she stated flatly.
“I am,” Denis agreed. “He wanted me to remind you occasionally that you don’t have to win the war in a day. That they’ve been fighting this front for nearly forty years, off and on.”
He fell silent, perhaps unsure of his next words.
“And what brings you here today, Denis?” Jessica pressed.
“What happens after Yenisei?” he replied. “We didn’t need to pack so heavily for a single hard run in and out. I can see being careful and retaining the tactical edge to do things while we’re there, but you’re up to something. As the commander of your flagship, I’ll do whatever you order, but as a representative of the Grand Admiral, I want to make sure you aren’t planning a second hop, deeper, to jump out and hit Winterhome.”
Jessica grinned. She had considered that option, but didn’t have the right formation for an attack on The Eldest himself, even just to pull another 2218 Svati Prime on them.
“Yeah, I thought so,” Denis said after a beat, finally relaxing from his rigidity. “Where are we going? And why couldn’t you tell anyone?”
“Because I won’t know if we can even try it, until I see what Yenisei has protecting it,” Jessica admitted. “I nearly got us all killed at Trusski by making bad assumptions based on how Fribourg did things.”
“Well, you’ve got Vanguard this time,” he said, gesturing to the mighty warhorse around them. “What did you learn at Stanovoy that you won’t even whisper to yourself in the dark, let alone tell the rest of us?”
He was serious today, and wouldn’t be brushed off lightly.
“Buran is an egg, Denis,” she admitted finally.
“An egg?”
“Tough shell,” she continued, holding up her hands as pantomime. “Hollow, gooey center. Yolk. Once we pierce the outside, we can run rampant, as long as we go sideways. The yolk, the oldest stars in The Holding, are going to be better defended, all the more so because we’ll be operating so far from any Fribourg bases.”
“But we’ve got Forward Base Omicron,” he countered.
“Yes, we do,” Jessica said. “And we know how their navigational system works now, so we can avoid Holding vessels for the most part, if we’re careful. Pochtovyi Trakt, the Postal Road. Those are blood vessels carrying oxygen to the systems. Nerve bundles carrying commands to the muscles. Stanovoy was a remote system, far from anyone important. The kind of place I’m known for hitting, after the Long Raid. Yenisei will hold to that pattern. Closer in, but still not all that important, except that now we’re getting closer to the home systems. The yolk.”
“So we’re likely to go hit a second system after we presumably hammer the shit out of Yenisei?” Denis asked. “Who?”
“Severnaya Zemlya,” Jessica pronounced. “The capital of the Altai sector.”
“When everyone would expect us to go after Ninagirsu,” he breathed. “The bulwark defending the Altai sector.”
“They would,” Jessica said.
“Okay, so now I’m here, representing Wachturm,” his voice hardened. “Are we taking too big of a risk? As you said to me, early in the Trusski campaign, we can’t win the war today, but we could lose it.”
“We absolutely could, Denis,” she said. “But Yenisei has absolutely nothing of military or economic value. Us hitting them is a black swan event. Just bad luck that they drew the short straw.”
“And on our way home, we are supposed to make a run at Ninagirsu,” he realized.
“We are,” Jessica said. “But we’re not. We’re going deeper. And I plan to hop sideways and give Severnaya Zemlya time to absorb the essence of the calamity so they can send help, both to Yenisei and to reinforce Ninagirsu. What idiot would dare attack Severnaya Zemlya?”
“Indeed,” he admitted. “So I’m doing my job for Wachturm. We’ve pushed The Eldest back, like you intended. Pissed him off, if St. Legier is any indication. Materially damaged him at Trusski and Stanovoy. Should we wait for help?”
“Absolutely not,” Jessica countered. “He’s built that assumption directly into his planning. He is a machine, Denis. Logical, but not creative. He can play chess better than anyone because he thinks thousands of times faster and can try millions of moves. He can make checklists so he doesn’t forget anything. But he cannot make an imaginative leap. All he can do is assign probabilities, and then work to mitigate the biggest, because his fleet is tiny for the number of worlds he has to protect, particularly in relationship to Fribourg. If we were to build a thousand CA-type corvettes, we might be able to simply overwhelm the bastard, purely on numbers, like a nest of fire ants.”
“Have we considered doing that?” Denis asked. “Fire ants and corvettes?”
“No,” she stopped cold, surprised at so obvious a possible solution. “No, we have not. Damn. And Yan went back to St. Legier with Mendocino. Grab Tobias Brewster and have him spend some time working up some scenarios and then fighting them with his crew down in the Emergency Bridge. He’s better at that sort of thing that most people, and I’m sure he’s been refighting our battles to learn to be better. He got that from me and you.”
“Got it,” Denis said. “And waiting?”
“The Eldest must rule people, but allows them no independence,” Jessica noted. “A human might guess at what we’re up to, but the machine will assume the logical outcome. We will defeat him with chaos and by making him look fallible. All we need is enough of his people to doubt him, and they’ll stop listening.”
“And then what?” Denis asked seriously. “Peace?”
“No, Denis,” Jessica said. “And then they won’t stop us when we come to kill him.”
Chapter XLIX
Imperial Founding: 180/03/31. Imperial Palace (Temporary), Mejico, St. Legier
Casey remembered her previous interactions with Arald Rohm: Field Marshal, Commander of the Seventh Guards Army.
They were not pleasant memories.
He was not a pleasant man, on the whole, being solely dedicated to apparently two tasks: achieving supreme command and marrying into the Imperial family.
Lady Heike might have been acceptable to the man, but Emmerich Wachturm had never expressed anything remotely like interest in such an alliance for his favorite daughter.
Casey supposed that, in another world, Father might have considered a man like Aral
d Rohm as a prospective son-in-law, married to Steffi. Casey’s sister had only ever aspired to a happy home and a large brood of children running around. Steffi had always been the most practical of the Imperial children. So Casey had watched the man maneuvering with a careful eye.
Marriages at this social level were rarely love matches. Most families approached them like long-term business deals, where everyone was satisfied enough, even if very few turned into the kinds of romances for the ages like Mother and Father, or Uncle Em and Aunt Freya had.
When Steffi had been murdered, Rohm’s cold eyes had turned to Casey next. That he was approaching fifty now, and had more than twenty-five years on her just meant that she could have expected to outlive the man by forty or fifty years had Father determined that to be the best match for his remaining daughter.
With Father and Ekke dead, Casey was the Imperial Household today, as far as that went. Arald Rohm might have turned his covetous eyes on her, but she was no longer a child, and no longer a mere woman. She was an Emperor, now. His avaricious dreams would have to wither and die on the vine unless he was willing to settle for one of her more distant, distaff cousins, the kind who hadn’t been important enough to reside anywhere near the Death Zone on that day.
Casey banished the evil grin from her face as she made a list of prospective names, inversely ranked according to her personal opinions of them. Lady Moirrey was staring at her with a weird grin, like she could guess at Casey’s thoughts.
“What?” Moirrey asked.
“Nothing good,” Casey admitted. “Planning who we could marry Rohm off to, to get him out of my hair.”
“Ya considereds findin’ him a foreign brides, m’Lady?” Moirrey giggled. “We know lots back home. Maybe he likes hisself a pirate? Oh, I knows. Wiley’s be awesome good fer ’im.”
Casey nearly spit, laughing at the thought of Arald Rohm wed to Shiori Ness. Wiley’d probably kill them for suggesting it. But she might also like the idea. Take it as a challenge.
Casey wondered if she could steal Jessica’s Flag Commander and make the woman the second admiral in the history of the Fribourg Fleet. That would be fun, just watching Em and Rohm fume.
“Hush, you,” Casey finally whispered amidst the giggles.
They were seated in firm chairs in a solarium kind of porch, at the hotel that was the temporary Imperial Palace until she decided where she wanted to build her new one. Plants filled the space with greenery and hints of flowers. It was warm with today’s partial sun, but not terribly hot, nor bad with the kind of humidity that she was unaccustomed to from serving on a starship.
She and Moirrey had the space to themselves, not counting two bodyguards in the corners and a couple of quiet girls coming and going, running errands. Locals. Survivors who had volunteered to serve, and been vetted by Melina Arcidiacono personally, her own three being too young for the job right now. Maybe in a few years.
One girl entered now with a tea service for four on a nice tray. The Imperial silver of Casey’s great-great-grandmother was gone forever, presumably. This had been functionally looted from one of the surviving stores in Mejico, like so much. They would be a generation sorting out things like that.
Moirrey had fallen silent, but the giggles were still there in her eyes. Casey assumed she was just waiting until this afternoon, when she could go flying again and play aerial games with Vo’s new scouts.
“Thank you, Anna-Katherine,” Casey said as the girl placed the tea and sandwiches on a close table. “We’ll serve ourselves. Send the gentlemen in.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the girl quietly said as she withdrew with a quick curtsy.
Girl. Casey considered Anna-Katherine. Perhaps three years younger than she was, at most. The product of a family at the lowest rank of nobility, with Anna-Katherine’s father being local Freiherr. The girl had barely any formal education in scholarly or artistic pursuits, having been raised to marry well, perpetuate the family line, and keep a proper household. Nothing more.
Nothing else was needed, for far too many of them.
Casey grit her teeth rather than say something rude. It wasn’t Anna-Katherine’s fault, or even her father’s. He was who society had made him, just as the girl was. The solid, stolid backbone of the Empire, just like the Fifty Families that had founded Aquitaine.
Casey would be at this for her entire life, and had only just started her revolution.
Shadows at the door. Two men, stopped and inspected by Casey’s troopers, regardless of who else might have passed them previously. Men who had failed an Emperor would die before failing a second, regardless of having been half a world away and powerless against stars falling from the heavens.
After a moment, Torsten Wald and Arald Rohm were allowed to join she and Moirrey on the porch.
“Your Majesty,” Torsten nodded serenely as he entered. “Lady Moirrey.”
Rohm did the same, and then all four of them were seated, with Moirrey on her right and Torsten on her left.
It was an interesting contrast, Torsten dressed in a navy blue jacket and slacks, and she and Moirrey wearing their Ritter sundresses, as the fashion magazines were calling them now. Rohm had gone for what looked like his best day uniform, sage rather than the flashier full dress version. The kind that Vo wore when he had to be dressed up, normally preferring the field utilities instead.
After so much time around Vibol Harmaajärvi, Casey had developed a keen nose for the intricacies of fashion, a thing that the tailor took as seriously as Em took fleet maneuvers. Rohm was in a precisely-tailored uniform, wearing just enough ribbons and tags to be impressive, without looking like a spring peacock. Casey couldn’t say if it represented a new leaf in Rohm’s life, or if he was just trying to look more like a soldier and less like a suitor.
As if.
Casey still had no interest in being close enough to Arald Rohm to even consider physical contact, let alone wooing. The way he had always looked at her before reminded her of a valuable horse. A prize, a thing, rather than a person. That his eyes had always kept wandering down to her chest and hips, as if measuring her breeding capabilities, had done nothing to improve her humor about the man.
Still, she needed him.
Moirrey took charge, serving the tea, with honey and cream as needed. Casey’s favorite dork could act like the most well-bred Imperial Lady when circumstances, or her friend, demanded it. Like today.
Moirrey was still a dork, though, most of the time. That helped keep Casey sane, too, even if she was never going flying in a personal scout suit. Those folks were nuts.
Small talk ensued over tea and snacks. Weather. Construction schedules. News about friends and relatives that had happily been off-planet, when everyone had assumed them dead.
Nothing of particular consequence.
Casey decided they had been social long enough. At this point in her life, every moment not spent in meetings and paperwork was time she wasn’t sleeping, and there was already too little of that. She placed her mug on the saucer and fixed Torsten Wald with a sharp, penetrating look. Almost hostile, but he had already prepared everything in advance.
Much of this was for show.
Wald, in turn, nodded sagely. He placed his mug down as well and turned to Rohm, who had turned the first bit apprehensive. Perhaps smelling the trap beginning to close.
“The Crown is concerned about circumstances related to events on December Nineteenth, Field Marshal Rohm,” Wald began, invoking his authority as Chief of Deputies, one of the few who reported directly to and spoke for the Emperor herself. The Head of her Government, itself. “There are ugly rumors circulating. And a video conference we watched involving yourself and zu Arlo.”
She had considered having Vo here for this conversation, but had decided that it would push the conversation in the wrong direction, making it too adversarial. Rohm, or someone like him, was necessary, especially as Vo had made it clear he would never agree to take Jenker’s place.
Casey watched R
ohm turn a little paler. Not much. Probably more tension than fear. As Vo had made clear from his reports, Rohm had started badly enough to possibly warrant his execution, and then had worked like a draft horse to redeem himself in the time since.
Rohm pursed his lips after a beat but remained silent. Casey watched his body language like a hawk, and was surprised when his eyes went down, instead of up. Raising them would suggest lies impending. Grand stories and deflections. About what she expected of the man, all things considered.
Down suggested contrition or internal anger, but she was unconvinced. Arald Rohm, or someone like him, was a necessary evil, yes. And he would have to convince her that he should be the man in command. She would let Wald and Uncle Em, zu Wachturm, deal with the situation after that, until she had to get personally involved.
Carrying through on Arlo’s threat to have the man executed rose to that level, even if Vo had written subsequent reports specifically detailing the exceptional work Rohm had done at Strasbourg, perhaps to reward the man for earnest effort.
“I made a serious mistake, Chief Deputy, Lady Moirrey, Your Majesty,” Rohm admitted in a small, serious voice, finally looking up to meet each of them eye to eye, his lips still compressed. “General zu Arlo saved me from compounding it, at great cost to himself, but I still do penance each day, having forgotten myself. In my arrogance, I thought to brush the man aside and show him how to handle such an operation, on the assumption that a foreigner, and a navy man to boot, would have no choice but to fail, while I would gain everlasting glory for myself.”
“Indeed?” Wald pressed. “Considering how the two of you met, how was zu Arlo able to bring you around?”
“He had made it clear that he would happily annihilate me and my men with no more thought than culling sheep, in order to get me to understand the stakes he was willing to play,” Rohm uttered. “After I arrived, he put me to work, Chief Deputy. Made me get my hands dirty, as he intended.”
“Work, Field Marshal?” Moirrey asked.