by Blaze Ward
“We boarded her for a customs inspection,” Jessica danced lightly around the truth, almost vapidly. It had worked with Admiral Wachturm, to think her an over–rated airhead. Perhaps the pirates would make a similar mistake. They had even less to go on. “A few of the guests were detained for commercial irregularities, and the vessel was sent on its way.”
If she hadn’t been so closely studying the man as she spoke, she probably would have missed the look that passed between Zhao and the chancellor, seated across from him. She didn’t know what it meant, but it did confirm at least some of her suspicions about the layers of subtlety and misdirection at work.
Arnulf appeared to miss it.
She would have put Denis Jež and Auberon on a higher level of alert, but there wasn’t one. Anyone attempting to ambush Jež and his crew right now was in for a very rude surprise, for a very short, very terminal, period of time.
“I see,” Chancellor Du said after a beat. “And will your guests be available to entertain? It would be remiss of us to ignore anyone important while you are here.”
Jessica smiled back at him with just the same hint of cruelty. “Unfortunately, no. They are technically prisoners of Lincolnshire for the time being, until such time as the authorities at Ramsey can provide us better guidance as to their status.”
The sour look on his face was reward enough to Jessica for playing the obnoxious little political power games being thrust upon her. She still preferred the clean movements of battle squadrons.
“How is Warlock?”
King Arnulf apparently had decided that the small talk had gone on long enough.
Jessica looked both ways down the table before responding, noting interest, hope, and disdain in equal parts, as one would expect from rivals and comrades.
“He will survive,” she announced. Leave it at that. Nothing about luck and timing, plots and assassination attempts. Just a simple fake smile from an ignorant foreigner.
“Very good. Thank you, Keller,” he said simply. “And thank your medical crew for being so fast. It would have been a great embarrassment to me, to have one of my own captains die of poison, having just survived a duel.”
Jessica noted the way he seemed to speak out of the side of his mouth, glancing sidelong at the chancellor seated on his immediate right. Perhaps there was something there she could explore.
“Oh,” she replied lightly, “those were just my line marines, not field medics. The actual medic is currently en route from the DropShip that delivered us to the surface.”
It was rewarding to see that bit of information register. The blinks. The pupils cycling. That little hint of whiteness as the surprise drained blood from faces. The reminder that they were dealing with professionals now. Even if their commander was just a harmless, little girl surrounded by all these big, bad pirates. She still had marines.
She could have told them that her dragoon was a stickler for that sort of cross–training, and famous across the fleet for the quality of marine non–coms he promoted out to other vessels on a regular basis. But really, letting the other guy think your people were all three meters tall was useful. Never know when that sort of thing would be the edge you needed on the battlefield.
“I see,” the man replied gravely. He did play the part of regality well. “There will be an investigation as to why Captain Agano was prepared as he was, with a poisoned spike on his ring and body armor hidden under his jacket.”
Arnulf took a deep breath to lend gravity to his words. He was very, very good at that aspect of rule. “If he hadn’t died, Rory Agano would have been exiled from the Court and stripped of his name for his behavior. As it is, I declare the feud with Daneel Ishikura over.”
He turned to the chancellor with a deeply serious mien. “See to it that Garth Agano and the rest of the family are made aware that they have reached the limits of my patience.”
Rather than speak, the man bowed his head. For a moment, Jessica saw the ghost of a smile pluck at his lips.
Arnulf turned to Jessica and studied her face for a moment before he continued. On one hand, it was a politician sizing up a potential rival. Commanders did it in bars and classrooms the galaxy over. There were also hints of a man studying a woman, although it felt as if he intended conquest rather than seduction for his part.
Because some men never learn.
“So, Keller,” he began, “why are you here?”
Interesting.
Blunt, pointed, a–political. Not quite the opposite of what she had expected, but close enough. Beside him, the chancellor nearly cringed before he caught himself.
Jessica took a deep breath and held it. This was exactly what both Premier Horvat and First Lord Kasum had wanted her to learn, the intricacies and subtleties of good diplomacy with dangerous men.
And, instead, she was dancing with a bull in a china shop.
However, she thought that way normally. If she could have something of an honest conversation with this man, this King of the Pirates, maybe she could sort out this mess without having to get the Republic involved.
More involved.
She was here now, wasn’t she?
And maybe pigs would fly.
“Lincolnshire had a problem with criminal elements,” she said. Past tense. Leave it at that. Not quite as blunt. Not quite as direct. The man was a big–shot pirate, treat him like one. Play to his ego.
“They asked Aquitaine for help. I came.” Jessica realized that she was tapping the table–top for emphasis as she spoke. At least she had learned that trick from the First Lord, one of many useful things he had taught her over the years.
Almost as a mirror, both Arnulf and his chancellor leaned forward to put their elbows on the table. She suppressed a smile as the two men flinched at each other.
“No,” King Arnulf said forcefully. “Why are you here?”
Jessica leaned forward again. It created an element of intimacy in the conversation, rather than the sort of righteous grandstanding other Republic officers might employ. She could imagine some of them, right here, right now, doing just that. “That base is ended,” she said flatly. “Lincolnshire is willing to consider a war over it. Aquitaine is willing to back them.”
“And you?” he said. Not rude, but hard and short. This was a man used to command. Being in command. Pride in being tougher, better, meaner. Being the King of the Pirates.
She lowered her voice to a level almost better suited for pillow talk, not that she had had any experience in such a thing. But she had read enough books.
“I consider the matter closed,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I would have annihilated Warlock and his people on the surface. If they come back, I will.”
“Corynthe has no treaty with Aquitaine,” the king murmured back. “No common border.”
“No,” she agreed, “but Lincolnshire does.” She let the thought dangle. Diplomacy, as the Premier had said, was the art of the unsaid, as much as the said. Bluff and bluster were fine in combat. Here, she needed a touch of ambiguity.
Really, it was just like fighting her combat robot, right? She could do this.
“And you come here?” he said, leaning back and his voice starting to work itself back up to a good towering rage. That was probably a sign of success, rather than failure. “And you would threaten me in my own Court?”
The eyes gave him away. They were still too calculating for the anger in the voice. This man would have made an amazing senator, had he been born on Ladaux or Anameleck Prime. Jessica was glad she didn’t have to deal with him on a regular basis. She could see how he became king.
“No,” she said, voice even a shade quieter.
He had to lean in again to hear her.
“A threat suggests that I’m not serious, Arnulf, King of the Pirates,” she continued. “Consider this a promise.”
She leaned back and sized up the rest of the room. The looks she got back were surprise, disdain, and in a two cases, outright lust. Apparently, no woman talke
d to a man that way here. Something else she would have to consider changing if she had to come back.
The king’s laughter was jarring, considering the situation.
The chancellor had just decided to do or say something when he was interrupted. He blinked in surprise and held his counsel.
“Are you sure you are not interested in a marriage contract, Keller?” the king boomed. “You are an amazingly–rare woman.”
The men around her evinced shock, bordering on apoplexy at the thought. Jessica Keller, Queen of the Pirates? Please.
She cocked an eyebrow at him, but remained silent. Very definitely a moment to allow the unsaid to speak. Who knew how serious this crazy barbarian king might be? And he was most certainly not her type.
Still, she seemed to have found an opening in his bluster. She smiled at his continuing laughter, a joke among warriors, unshared by the common folk.
“Du,” he said suddenly, clapping his chancellor hard on the shoulder and nearly knocking the smaller man out of the chair, “let us have a proper banquet to welcome our esteemed colleague, Admiral Keller. We can show her what Corynthe society is truly about.”
Jessica imagined what she saw on the Jing Du’s face as he looked down was the origin of the saying Staring daggers at someone, for just the briefest instant, so fast she might have imagined it.
When he looked back at his king, he was all smiles.
“Of course, Your Excellency,” he said smoothly. “It shall be as you wish.”
Jessica doubted that, but at least she had a better understanding of the undercurrents here. The sneaker waves. The rocks. Now she just had to figure out how to maneuver in them, and if there were any allies she could make in this place.
Chapter XXVI
Date of the Republic November 1, 393 City of Corynthe, Petron
Denis never worked in the command centurion’s office, even after Keller had moved down to mostly work from the flag bridge and the previously unused Fleet Lord’s office.
His own office was much more cozy. And it was his office. His space.
Right now, he was reviewing scanner logs in his office with his two scouting experts, Giroux and da Vinci. She had brought in a portable hologram projector and was running it on a sped–up loop.
“It’s not obvious at first glance,” da Vinci drawled, pointing at the emerging patterns. “Things like this never are. But when I speed it up, what do you see?”
She leaned back and kind of draped herself across the chair. Denis knew Ainsley well enough to realize that she wasn’t trying to be sexy. This was just her normal default as a hot–shot pilot, looking down on everyone who didn’t fly. They were all born that way.
“Crap,” Denis replied. That pretty much summed it up.
“All of them?” Giroux continued, studying the image.
Denis watched the scene play out on the recording as Auberon and her consorts came into a high polar orbit. Up here, they were generally out of everybody’s way, as far as transports and local vessels went. Plus, they could quickly get anywhere on the surface of the planet if they needed to.
Not that he was expecting to execute a combat run on ground targets. But that wasn’t the same as being unprepared. Keller had trained them all to what she considered the proper level of paranoid preparedness. The locals would probably be aghast at the depth of tactical planning that had been done, or the number of targets that could be destroyed by calling out a single number.
At the speed of the recording playing back, he could see several of what the locals considered warships, the big Motherships that looked like geese in his eyes, all pull back, and then break orbit at different times and head off the same general direction. One by one, they leapt into Jumpspace and vanished.
“What’s left?” Denis asked.
da Vinci leaned forward from her pose just enough to press a button. Her arms and fingers were longer than his. He would have pulled something, twisting like that.
On the screen, the image froze. Two dots lit up, one docked to the only big station in orbit, and one floating free in a relatively nearby orbit.
Denis looked close, gave up, and zoomed the image manually.
“Docked is the 3–ring Sky Dancer, according to traffic control,” da Vinci continued. “The other one is a 4–ring named Supernova. That latter one appears to be their flagship.”
“What’s the count?” Denis asked.
“Three of the 4–rings left the area, plus five of the 3–rings,” Giroux said. “In addition, more than a dozen vessels the local call Strippers, and nearly two dozen freighters, generally small but a couple of medium ones.”
“Strippers?” Denis wasn’t sure he had heard the man correctly.
“Portable chop shops, sir,” Giroux replied. “Locusts that descend after the pirates have captured someone. They set up portable air seals around parts of the vessel so they can cut out the parts they want, from what I have been able to gather, sometimes in the field, and sometimes in orbit.”
“How much firepower are we looking at?”
da Vinci shrugged. “If they were all top–of–the–line Imperials, maybe three full Fleet Carriers worth of fighters,” she said. “A 4–ring can carry around twenty craft. The 3–rings have twelve to fifteen if they are full, but they rarely are. For comparison, there are also 2–ring craft with about eight to ten, and 1–ring Motherships that haul up to six.”
“Bear in mind,” Giroux interjected, “that the fighters we’re looking at are extremely old, and not nearly as capable as even our older M–5 Harpoon fighters, although I did see an M–6 Gungnir on one of them.”
“Really? How the hell did a first line Republic fighter get all the way out here? And in their hands?” Denis was amazed. Even Auberon had to make due with older craft, although he had high hopes that Keller’s connections to the First Lord would eventually rate them better gear.
“Mystery for the ages, boss,” da Vinci shrugged.
“So now what?” Giroux asked.
“You’ve done your part,” Denis said. “Now I need to talk to Keller, brief her, and figure out her contingency plans. You’ll know not long after I do.”
The two nodded, packed up their stuff, and departed, leaving him to ponder options and corners.
There was an entire Battle Fleet worth of firepower out here.
Apparently, piracy was far more profitable than he had ever imagined.
Did anyone else back home know that?
Chapter XXVII
Date of the Republic November 2, 393 City of Corynthe, Petron
Jessica mentally reviewed the file that Denis had sent her from his watchful spot in high orbit.
The implications were…unsettling.
She hoped that the departing Motherships weren’t immediately on their way back to Sarmarsh IV to try to reestablish the base. Of course, since it would take years for the moon to settle from all that energy, it might be worth watching them try. How did you build a base on a suddenly earthquake–prone moon?
Worse, they might have all decided to run off and attack somewhere else. That was the downside. She couldn’t be anywhere near Lincolnshire to foil attacks if she was here. Hopefully, she could stop them permanently instead. Nobody out here was dumb enough to provoke Aquitaine, were they?
She looked around the room and reconsidered things.
Tonight, the wealthy and famous of Petron were here. In a way, it reminded her of her reception at Ramsey, except everyone here appeared to be dressed for what they thought a pirate ball would look like. Or maybe, what one should be.
She was in the land of the pirates.
Marcelle stayed close, a second shadow everywhere Jessica went. Not that she minded. Tonight, she was only drinking from bottles and eating food brought to the event and supervised by her own marines. Appearances be damned.
Still, she circulated politely. Many wanted nothing to do with her. That was fine. She was the barbaric foreigner in this gathering, dressed in her boringly sim
ple dark–green dress uniform, without even a knife at her belt.
Marcelle had a knife. Several of them, as a matter of fact, hidden about her body, along with two pistols. And a handful of marines close by. And all the rest of the firepower she might need to bring to bear, if Jessica screwed up so royally that she managed to start a war instead of preventing one.
Small steps.
A woman approached. A very tall, rangy, slinky kind of woman. One who gave off the faintest hint of spring flowers.
Jessica guessed her to be a very–well preserved middle age. She was showing off less bronze–colored flesh than a twenty–year–old would have, but doing a much better job of it. Her face was beautiful, if artfully maintained. It was her hands that gave the decades away. Too many spots and wrinkles.
Jessica would have suggested gloves to a woman who was a friend.
“Command Centurion Keller?” the woman asked, as if there was any doubt to the question.
Jessica nodded and studied the woman closer. She had not been announced at that rank at any point on this planet, so this was someone who knew who she was, or knew Aquitaine naval uniforms well enough to understand.
This stranger had shoulder–length hair. Jessica had a few grays starting to appear, so she had done enough research on the topic to know this woman’s head was probably completely gray by now, but it was dyed a rich black, and then tinted again with hints of violet that made her eyes stand out of her face.
They would have done that anyway, but the make–up made her unforgettable. Jessica had never met anyone with eyes that were such a dark shade of blue. Usually, blue meant lighter, tilting towards gray. These were the color of dark blue sapphires.
The rest of the face was equally well made up. And well maintained. She was utterly gorgeous, not just for her age, but for any age.
Jessica felt the weight of her stare, as if they were already enemies, having barely met. She was at a loss. Competition, perhaps?
“Desianna Indah–Rodriguez,” she said, matter–of–factly.