Auberon (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 1)

by Blaze Ward

  He did some quick math. If he slowed down to engage them, they might miss the rendezvous point.

  Would Keller leave him here? She had threatened too.

  If he sped up, they would barely get a shot at the tug in passing, hardly enough to even warm up their shields, certainly not enough to do any damage.

  Imperials weren’t that good, were they?

  Can’t turn and launch missiles at them from here without getting trapped. Nothing I can do now but run with my tail between my legs.

  “Uller. Vienna. Prepare to come to red–line speed. We’ve got to try to outrun them.”

  Both pilots acknowledged and kept up as he pushed the throttle to the last stop and locked it there. He considered dumping all of his missiles, just to reduce weight and drag on the wispy tops of the atmosphere.

  That would look really good on the after–action report, wouldn’t it?

  He watched precious minutes tick by. Ahead, the BattleTug was ignoring them, trying to chase the rest of the squadron. Behind, the Imperials slowly caught up, lighter and faster around the curve, and taking a slingshot trajectory. They would only get one shot, but they would have speed and position when they did.

  This was going to suck.

  Vienna’s voice came first. It was just as dark and sultry as she was. Not his type, but she certainly made Uller’s motor run, even if she would never give him the time of day. “Missiles inbound,” Vienna said calmly. “Initiating defensive measures now.”

  Jouster cursed silently. That would just slow them down more at the very time they needed speed to escape.

  He deployed his screamers, hot little boxes broadcasting a loud radio signal. Incoming missiles often locked on those instead of the primary target, but he had to back his engines down to be less of a thermal signature.

  He banked, climbing up and away from the screamers, just as his wingmates were doing above him.

  This was bad. The five Imperials had slowed as well. They might be able to brake enough to engage, instead of blasting right by. And the BattleTug was coming up under them.

  He was about to be caught between the proverbial rock and hard place.

  Flashes of light marked the impact of Imperial missiles on defensive buoys. At least that much had worked.

  And then his defensive systems warbled as the Imperials got a targeting lock.

  “Team,” he yelled. “Go for broke, straight up. Now.”

  “Negative, Jouster,” a female voice interrupted. “Hold your line for six more seconds and then climb out.”

  That was Lagunov. What the hell was Bitter Kitten up to?

  Jouster red–lined the engines once more and wobbled his craft back and forth. He could see pulses flash past him as ionized packets of energy missed.

  The Imperials were actually close enough to engage with Type–3’s? Crap.

  Jouster barrel–rolled to the right, careful to stay flat as he did so, but hopefully catching the Imperials out of position. The scanner showed Uller and Vienna staying right with him. All those hours in the flight simulator were paying dividends right now, as they moved like a school of fish.

  “Jouster,” Bitten Kitten called out, “Pull up now.”

  He pulled back on the yoke and felt inertial forces drive him down into the seat.

  He watched two friendly craft slalom right under his formation at full speed, triple cannon firing as fast as the generators could pulse them. He hoped the Imperials were as surprised as he was.

  Jouster pulled a quarter rotation pivot as he climbed, leaving the entire battle field above him out the cockpit window. Five Imperials fighters had suddenly turned into two as Bitter Kitten and somebody else shot past.

  She got three of them?

  The other direction, a wall of fire erupted over the dorsal hull of the BattleTug, secondary explosions feeding on each other.

  Just as he cleared the gravity well and pushed his fighter over to make the rendezvous with Auberon, a flash of light appeared on his scanner.

  One of the two fighters who had just saved his butt disappeared in a cloud of fire as a missile slammed into it.

  “da Vinci, this is Jouster,” he said quietly. “Who got hit?”

  Lagunov answered first. “That was Ironside, Jouster. They got Gustav.”

  So. One of his wasn’t coming home. And had died rescuing him from his own stupidity.

  There was going to be hell to pay when he got back to Auberon.

  Chapter XXVI

  Date of the Republic February 6, 393 Jumpspace outbound from C’Xindo system

  Only one chair on this side of the table was occupied, to the two over there.

  She was not out–numbered.

  Jessica sat in the center of the long table and looked across at her two pilots.

  It was not a happy look. She was not a happy woman.

  She had, however, left the seats on either side of her empty.

  If this was going to be a formal Court of Inquiry, she would have installed two other people as judges, probably Denis Jež and Iskra Vlahovic. Having the First Officer and Flight Deck Commander, her second in command and the air boss respectively, would have meant formal charges. Career–ending sorts of inquiries.

  She was not that angry.

  Quite.

  It was a close thing.

  She let the silence hang. Hopefully, Milos Pavlovic, commonly known as Jouster, and Darya Lagunov, Bitter Kitten, would be able to grasp how angry she was and keep very, very quiet while she stewed over the after–action reports.

  She looked up at each of them in turn.

  Bitter Kitten had the decency to look embarrassed and sorry, like a school girl who had forgotten to turn in a term paper on time and was waiting for the headmistress to come down on her.

  Jouster sat with a scowl on his face, like he really didn’t believe he had done anything wrong. In his mind, he might not have. There was a reason he was on the frontier, rather than in the war zones. No commander there had been willing to put up with his shenanigans for long. Even if he was one of the best pilots in the fleet.

  However, that only got you so far.

  Jessica set the stack of papers down and glanced at the two empty seats at her side.

  “I had considered a Court of Inquiry for the actions at C’Xindo,” she said, quietly enunciating the words.

  The two pilots leaned forward a bit to hear her.

  So at least she had their attention.

  “If it ever happens again, there will be one. And any forbearance on my part now will weigh heavily on the charges filed then. Am I clear?”

  Lagunov nodded forcefully. “Aye, sir,” she said, “won’t happen again.”

  Pavlovic looked askance at the woman beside him for a moment and scowled harder. He made eye contact across the table. “As you wish, commander.”

  Jessica fought down the urge to lean across the table and slap him. Scion of one of the bluest of the blue blooded clans. Video–star looks. Pain in the ass because nobody was willing to challenge his family.

  Yes, she knew his kind. Knew them from prep school and the Academy, when a poor scholarship student was a second class citizen. When she was expected to shine the boots of officers like him on the weekend. Possibly for tips if the job was well done.

  She really wanted to wreak a vast and terrible vengeance upon his head right now, but it would look petty. And it would reflect poorly on her as a commander that things had gotten to this point. It would create unnecessary problems for the First Lord.

  She wasn’t ready to fight that war.

  Yet.

  She leaned back instead. She was the senior Command Centurion on this frontier, by right of commanding the largest vessel. She was no Fleet Lord, but there were no Fleet Lords looking over her shoulder here.

  She smiled. It was a devious, evil smile.

  Bitter Kitten paled. Even Jouster blinked.

  “All of this will be entered into the formal record,” she said. “We will consider
this an informal Commander’s Mast. Lagunov, you are grounded for the next forty–eight hours and assigned to whatever duty the Flight Deck Commander deems fit during that time. I will suggest to her that you clean the Officer’s restroom with a toothbrush. And that will be that. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bitter Kitten nodded and spoke quietly. They both knew it could have been much, much worse.

  “Then you are dismissed,” Jessica said.

  She waited while the pilot stood, saluted, and fled out the door without another word.

  Jessica stared back at Jouster hard. He had a very hard head and a wide stubborn streak. It had served him well to get this far in life and command. It was time to get through to him, one way or the other.

  “Jouster,” she smiled hard, “you’re grounded.”

  His scowl grew confused. Obviously, not the turn of event he was expecting.

  “For how long?” he asked.

  Her smile widened, turned feral. “Until I say otherwise. Until you give me a reason to trust you again, or you put in for a transfer to anywhere else.”

  He shot to his feet. “You can’t do this,” he thundered.

  She smiled up at him, knowing it was digging in deeper than a tick under his skin. “Watch me, Jouster. Just watch me.”

  “I’ll fight you on this. Do you know who my family is?”

  Now she fought to keep the purr out of her voice. He might be a great pilot, and a fantastic tactician, but he lacked that certain strategic level of thinking.

  “If you cross me, Jouster,” she said quietly, “I’ll have you brought up on charges of Cowardice In The Face Of The Enemy and shipped back to Ladaux to stand trial.”

  He reacted as if she had slapped him. A warm, sharp, open–palmed kind of slap.

  Jouster was probably already familiar with those from a woman. However, Jessica wouldn’t have slapped him if push came to shove. She would have kicked him in the groin first and then stomped on his hands when he went down.

  “You’ll never make that stick,” he whispered.

  She rose from her seat. She barely came up to his nose, but she wanted to lean forward so she could whisper back, like lovers. “I don’t have to, boy,” she breathed, hard at him. “Everyone will know that your famous family connections got you off. But the Fighting Lords will know. Your career will be over and you will never fly anything again, except your father’s yacht. I promise you that.”

  “And if I refuse?” his voice started to creep back up in volume. It came out as more of a snarl.

  Jessica pulled one of the papers from the stack, spun it around, and slid it across the table. “Sign this transfer request,” she murmured. “I’ll turn right now and run for Simeon or Kismayo as fast as Auberon will carry us. You’ll be gone, and I’ll requisition two replacement pilots I can trust. Easy as that.”

  “Why?” he cried.

  “Because you fucked up,” she replied. “That was an amateur move, executed by a lazy pilot, just phoning it in. If you can’t fly any better than that, then I have no use for you. And I can’t trust you to follow orders, so we’re going to lose more pilots bailing your ass out of stupid situations unnecessarily. Ironside might have died in the line of battle, but you put him there.”

  She watched him take a breath and control the anger she had been goading him into.

  Okay, so self–control was possible for him. There might be hope.

  “What do you want from me, Commander?” he said, trying hard to hold the emotion at bay.

  “I would like to trust you, Jouster,” she replied. “And I would like to think that you were a better pilot than you’ve shown me. Right now, I’m thinking about putting you on Necromancer as a Tower Gunner and seeing who wants to try to qualify as a fighter pilot to replace you.”

  “I can do better,” he said, pain starting to edge into his voice.

  “Prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Not my problem, pilot. Dismissed.”

  She watched him stand there, shocked out of rationality. All the blood had drained out of his face.

  She couldn’t smile. Not when she wanted to scream at him, or hit him, or demote him. Anything to get through to him and make him act like a grown–up, like the officer and gentleman he was supposed to be.

  Maybe it was too late for that.

  She picked up her papers, stepped around the table, and left him there.

  He would find his way. Or he wouldn’t.

  Chapter XXVII

  Date of the Republic April 8, 393 Ladaux

  His ancient, ornate desk had been made from oaks harvested for the purpose on Anameleck Prime. It was so much larger and heavier than the one he had in his office up at Fleet HQ in orbit, but it was a comfort to Nils Kasum as he considered his response to the ornate and heavy piece of linen paper sitting before him, just delivered to his office by an official Senate Messenger.

  Had it been in regards to anything other than Keller, the summons most likely would have reached him through normal channels, and he could have dealt with it quietly.

  Instead, somebody, probably one of Loncar’s friends, had managed to get the Question Of Ao–Shun on the Senate’s Order of Business and demanded a public hearing, today, on the potential charges of War Crimes Against Humanity.

  This sort of move had Loncar’s fingerprints all over it. The man was smart and powerful, and absolutely, absolutely as hidebound as they came.

  Nils read the page again.

  My, such a big sounding, important concept.

  He could visualize Loncar seated with someone like Tesar, cuddled up in one of their favorite clubs, whispering conspiracies to each other. Perhaps the very Club down the street where they were all three life members.

  Brandy snifters filled with the most expensive vintage. Lights low to further the mood of conspiracy. Wait–staff hired for looks and discretion, rather than competence.

  Nils never attended that one. He much preferred the Officer’s Bar at Fleet Headquarters, where he could drink and dine with Fighting Lords, and occasionally drop in on younger officers and take their measure.

  Yet another reason to stay in orbit as much as possible.

  So, a Senatorial subpoena to Appear And Give Testimony. It was only proper. The Senate was the final authority on such matters, well within their rights to demand accountability from the Fleet. It was his prerogative as First Lord of the Fleet to defend his people.

  If only he could tell them the truth.

  Nils reached down and re–opened the closed folder marked First Lord: Eyes Only.

  Inside, the title page pretty much said it all.

  Project Mischief.

  He thumbed through a variety of pages, carefully detailed and annotated, and made a mental note to have Kamil dig up the personnel file for one Yeoman Moirrey Kermode and figure out exactly how she had slipped through the cracks to end up where she was. That woman had talent. And a wicked, wicked sense of humor.

  When he had sent Jessica Keller to the Cahllepp Frontier to cause a ruckus, he had never imagined this. Well, not exactly this.

  Still, it had worked, hadn’t it?

  He checked the time and rose. He had long enough to get into his formal robes and have a bite. It was likely to be a long afternoon.

  Hopefully it would be a fruitful one.

  Ξ

  Nils took the measure of the great chamber as he entered, announced at the door by the Orator and escorted to his seat by the Sergeant at Arms. The room was serious, but not overly hostile. About normal, all things considered.

  A row of Senators on their dais, elevated above the poor victim called to give testimony in the lone seat before them. A gallery of witnesses behind where he would sit, rather full today.

  There were too many marriages and alliances interwoven in this chamber for anything like politics to be fixed for any longer than the issue at hand. It was the blessing and the curse of the Republic. Things tended to move slowly, but they had all the maneuverab
ility of a tumbling dreadnaught trying to get the engines back on line. Once events were moving, they kept on a line as straight as a meteor.

  Conspiracies like this were nothing new. First Lord of the Fleet was an appointed position, held during the will of the Senate. Appointees usually retired after a time. Rarely did someone get to this level of politics and leave themselves open to embarrassment and censure.

  Today, someone in the Senate had thought to sneak up on him, catch him in the gears of state, and grind him into coffee they might serve with dinner? Him?

  How quaint.

  He smiled at Fleet Lord Loncar, a rare spectacle, seated in the public gallery with a bodyguard, since a serving officer could not sit in the Senate, and he was technically still on active duty, but without a fleet to command.

  Besides, his sister was a much better operator anyway. She would have threatened him in a private meeting, so it must have come from some other flank.

  Probably her brother. Bogdan was a fool at times.

  Well, the truth would come out soon enough.

  Nils took his seat before the panel and waited.

  The Senate Select Committee for the Fleet of The Republic of Aquitaine took itself very seriously.

  Its members were all experts on fleet operations and logistics, membership voted on by the body as a whole, rather than subject to a random draw, as some were, or given as favors or sinecure.

  Important business like the Fleet was never left to chance.

  They were, however, still politicians playing, at least to some extent, to the masses, the mob seated behind him. The text of the prepared statements he had been provided would, at a minimum, require two hours to complete, followed, only then, by questions from the Senators.

  That was when things would get interesting.

  Nils settled into his chair, alone facing the seventeen Senators on their rostrum, and composed himself to look interested while not falling asleep. That was another acquired skill.

  He wasn’t that prepared to insult their intelligence. Publically.

  Ξ

  Nils could tell by the way the Chairman began to wind his oratory to ever–greater heights that the man was rounding off his prepared statements. It had been entertaining, if predictable. They usually were.