by Blaze Ward
Daneel felt those regal eyes boring into him, a nearly physical weight settling on his shoulders. Again, he was reminded how this man came to rule.
“Truth?” the King asked.
“Aye, Arnulf,” Daneel nodded. “Before…”
Before. How to explain such a world–shaking transformation to this man in simple terms and not be here all day? Before Sarmarsh. Before planet–wracking devastation. Before Hellhound. Before Teri.
Before Jessica Keller.
Before.
Now, it was the present, verging on the future. Possibly eternity.
How do you convince a man like Arnulf?
“Yes,” Arnulf replied simply, looking at the two women in turn. “Before.”
Daneel learned another facet of rule.
Arnulf paused a moment before he continued, eyes focused on Daneel like a hungry cat. “So what is the state of the conspiracy?”
“I do not know, Arnulf,” Daneel said simply, ready to finally embrace his future, whatever it was. “At one time, I was supposed to challenge you for your crown. You would have lost, due to a treachery that was not explained to me. I suspect something like Hellhound tried to do to me. I would have reigned in your palace. Jing Du would have continued on with another generation of bureaucrats. Ian Zhao would have become first among the Captains, and the world would have returned to the way it was before you started bending minds towards civilization. David would have fled or been destroyed.”
Daneel felt a planetary weight lift off of his shoulders as he listened to his own words.
Up until now, he had been without responsibility.
Now he was free.
He felt Jessica squeeze his arm in support. That alone meant more than any smile on Arnulf’s fierce face.
The king turned the weight of his terrible visage next to Jessica, the shortest person here, but far from the smallest. He put an arm around Desianna’s hips to pull her close.
“And why,” he continued, “does Aquitaine care?”
Jessica Keller looked up at the giant of a man, even bigger than Daneel by two fingers, and smiled.
“Because Aquitaine is civilized, Arnulf, King of the Pirates,” she said simply. “If you survive, perhaps there is hope for Corynthe as well. I am not an ambassador. You wouldn’t have listened to one. I am a warrior. You will hear me.”
Arnulf turned to kiss Desianna on the forehead. “For thirty years, Admiral Keller, this woman has been my partner. My co–conspirator. My rock. My safe harbor. She tells me to trust you. Backs you. Helped you to convince Warlock to come clean.”
He took a deep breath that Daneel felt himself mirroring. It was as though the whole weight of the world rested on the next words spoken.
“So I will trust the foundation of my throne on the words of an Aquitaine admiral, and my first love,” he said heavily. “How do we defeat them? I am merely a king. I cannot order Ian Zhao arrested without a better reason, or better proof, or I will turn the rest of the captains firmly against me. And I certainly cannot eliminate Jing Du without plunging the whole kingdom into chaos.”
“I have studied the patterns of ships coming and going, Your Majesty,” Jessica said quietly. “There was a chance the ambush would have occurred here, or at Callumnia. We were prepared for that eventuality. When we return to Petron, I expect their conspiracy to come to fruition. How, I do not know.”
“How prepared?” he said. “Who is involved?”
“David knows,” Jessica replied. “He has been working very closely with my team.”
“David knows? Why was I not informed?”
“An ancient philosopher once said that a secret known to three people,” Jessica said seriously, “is only a secret if two of them are dead. David is the only other person Desianna and I felt we could trust. You had enough work, making everyone behave during this Promenade. We had to prepare for the rest.”
“But prepared,” he replied to her with a hot, savage smile, “is forearmed. We will walk into the lion’s den one last time, my friends. Perhaps, I can even retire and make David the new king when this is all done. Certainly, I will have broken the captains to the bit.”
“And if we fail, my love?” Desianna asked quietly.
“Then make sure,” he looked at each of them in turn, “that you avenge me.”
Daneel felt a savage chill race up his spine.
Chapter XXXIX
Date of the Republic February 27, 394 City of Lincoln, Ramsey
Ramsey Governor Wapasha had the look of a man who was going to be stubborn. Certainly he was an important personage in these parts. He had eventually let the two of them come to his office for this meeting, but this looked like the point where he was about to dig his heels in and start to buck.
Tomas Kigali smiled. It was an easy smile. Breezy, even. On a man who was tall, and lean, and rakish, and good looking. And not about to take any crap from some pissant bureaucrat in the back of beyond who thought he was the shit.
Tomas glanced over at his cohort on this adventure, Command Centurion Robertson Aeliaes. Robbie just grinned back and nodded, happy to back his play.
Tomas turned the searchlight of his smile back to the governor.
That man was a dandy, in every sense of the word.
“Look, Aquitaine,” the governor began, “you can’t just waltz in here and start making demands. Lincolnshire is independent and sovereign. I am not about to just give you two of my warships so you can go flitting off on some adventure in pirate country. You make a polite request through formal channels and we’ll get to it in due course.”
“We don’t have time for bureaucratic niceties, governor,” Tomas replied. “In about forty hours, we have to break orbit and run like hell to Petron so we can be there when Jessica Keller gets back. We need your help.”
“Help Corynthe? Are you deranged, Aquitaine? They’re pirates.”
“Yes,” Robbie leaned in and agreed, his dark skin and deep voice providing such a rich contrast to Kigali. “And Jessica is trying to negotiate a treaty with them to make them play nice, with the full backing of the Republic of Aquitaine behind it.”
“And just what makes you think they’ll listen to her? She’s a woman in a land of chauvinistic men.”
Kigali smiled. He pulled a small holo–projector from his pocket and set it on the desk between them.
“She already has their attention, Governor.”
Tomas pressed play.
Ξ
The projection was an amazingly–lifelike composite. You could do that when you had that many scanners and cameras orbiting a target and watching, plus all the power of a navigation computer to process the animation afterwards. And a wizard like Yeoman Kermode directing.
The scene came up with the pirate base on Sarmarsh IV approaching, taken from a gun camera on one of the M–5 Harpoon fighters in Jouster’s wing as they crested the abrupt horizon.
“The pirates,” Moirrey’s soothing radio voice intoned, “had established themselves on Sarmarsh like ticks, burrowed deep into a dog’s fur and dangerous as trapped rats. Lincolnshire couldn’t handle the task of clearing them out, so they asked for help. Jessica Keller and Auberon answered. We came, we saw, we conquered.”
It was a lovely reconstruction of what the base looked like, the day before Auberon arrived. Well laid out, with a number of small gun emplacements protecting the launch bay. The monstrous Type–4 beam at the bottom of the valley. The twin Primary turrets watching the sky like hunting dogs.
“The pirates thought they were secure. Heavily armed. Untouchable. They had not reckoned with the Republic of Aquitaine.”
An explosion blew out the flight deck as the stealth missile snuck home, followed by several more explosions as the stored missiles and fuel cells went up.
“They were pirates,” Moirrey continued soothingly, “prepared to fight Johnny Law and hold him off until they could escape. They were not ready to fight a war. They had no idea what a real war would be like.”<
br />
Rajput came into view now, flying backwards and bow down as the ground installations opened fire and missed. Rajput responded with her big guns, followed quickly by Auberon destroying one of the turrets.
“Aquitaine offered them terms, but were refused. So we brought war instead.”
The gun turrets exploded, flames and rubble spewing in all directions as the flight wing immolated the last tower with guns and missiles. Truly, it was hell on Earth.
Cut to a view from above. Later. The fires were out, but the destruction was wide–spread. Evocative. Intoxicating.
“Again, Jessica Keller offered them terms for their lives. This time, they understood that she was not bluffing, and that their only choices at this point were the meekness of the lamb, or making their peace with the Creator.”
The camera panned slowly back and withdrew from the scene as the giant asteroid came into view, tumbling like a lazy bullet. It plunged into the heart of the pirate base like a knife, cutting the heart out of a sacrificial victim.
To Tomas, it was like watching a soufflé swell gracefully, and then collapse in failure. Not that his ever did. But he had seen pictures, heard horror stories.
“The pirate base on Sarmarsh IV was annihilated,” Moirrey’s voice worked up to a proper intonation of Doom at this point. “It will not be rebuilt in your lifetime, because Jessica Keller and Auberon were not about half–measures to protect Lincolnshire. But right now, she is talking directly to the King of the Pirates, and she needs your help. The Republic of Aquitaine is here to protect you. But Lincolnshire must help as well. Call your representatives. Call your mayor. Call the governor. Tell them to bring peace by making sure the big guns are there when Jessica Keller needs them. Our future depends on it.”
Ξ
Tomas pressed the stop button and pocketed the projector. Yeoman Kermode was an amazing talent. And she understood the locals in a way that nobody not born here could.
The governor sat across from them and visibly ground his teeth in anger. “There is no way in hell, Aquitaine,” he snarled, “that I will let you broadcast that over the planetary net.”
Tomas smiled serenely. “You don’t have to, Governor,” he said. “We transmitted it to some friends over at the university’s Journalism department when we first asked for this meeting.”
He checked his mechanical wrist watch with a flourish.
“Had it not taken three hours for you to agree to meet with us,” Tomas continued, “you probably would have had time to stop them. I suspect it’s a little too late now.”
As if on cue, an aide knocked at the door, opened it, and entered.
“Governor,” she said, taking a moment to check the two strangers out, “the comm system has gone completely nuts. People are calling in from all over. From the sounds of it, we’re talking pitchforks and torches angry.”
Governor Wapasha nodded and waved her out of the room silently.
“I don’t have a choice here, do I?” he asked.
“You have a number of options, Governor,” Tomas smiled ruthlessly. “The one that probably leaves you in the best position would be to send the former RAN vessels CR–255 and CR–219 with us to Petron.”
“And if you fail there, boy?” the man asked harshly. “You’ll have cost me a significant amount of my defensive forces for Lincolnshire. Winnipeg and Admiral Matsushita are what keep Ramsey safe from those pirates.”
“Governor,” Robbie said, leaning forward to lend a quiet gravity to his words, “if something happens to those two vessels, it will be because they’ve already gone through me and Brightoak to get there. And I promise you I intend to make that a very expensive bargain for those fine folks at Petron.”
“And if they overwhelm you, Aquitaine?”
“A great many of them will have to die trying first, Lincolnshire. The survivors won’t be bothering anyone for a while.”
Chapter XL
Date of the Republic March 1, 394 Bunala
Emmerich Wachturm looked down at his notebook with satisfaction as he closed it. He hadn’t really expected it, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t take advantage of the situation. Although he supposed that the wyrm could still turn at any time.
And he wasn’t about to trust his innermost thoughts to a computer controlled by her, but she had been happy to provide him with simply–made paper notebooks and a stylus. It was almost like being home.
In a nearby courier pouch, two other notebooks had already been filled, carefully encoded in such a way that only a handful of people, most of them blood relatives, could easily decipher them.
His papers were secure. He was generally allowed to tour this ship, if not one of the motherships, with one of Keller’s officers as a minder and tour guide. The regular dinners with Keller, Arnulf, Jing Du, and others. Even the big state dinners at every tour stop.
Better still, Keller had recognized all the diplomatic niceties, treating him with all the honors and care of an Imperial ambassador, even if he was just a Neutral with a story that smelled like four–day–old herring.
He smiled at the thought. Once upon a time, he would have expected so much more from Command Centurion Jessica Keller. At least he could report home with authority on that front.
Obviously, the conspiracy had had to become more circumspect, of design. It had been a master stroke, the work of Arnulf’s First Wife to grab all the chess pieces and hide the board.
The shame, the amateur mistake, lay in letting the main players continue to talk, even here in semi–exile, and to schedule the return to Petron with so much fanfare. But, what could one reasonably expect from females? Obviously, Fribourg was right, in that aspect. Wonderful Amazons, granted, but substandard spies.
Emmerich looked forward to returning home. He had always hoped that his youngest daughter, Heike, would grow up into a reasonable facsimile of Jessica Keller. Now he needed to tell her to aim higher and achieve true success.
His one great fear was dying out here, for no useful cause. Getting caught in the revolution, when Arnulf was deposed, and being trapped aboard Auberon at a point when Ian Zhao ordered the vessel to depart and she chose to fight instead.
Dying was one thing. Dying stupidly was something else.
That woman was a natural warrior, not a diplomat. She would fight. And be utterly destroyed by a wall of fighters descending on her like locusts. Hopefully, he could get Ian Zhao, in a first act as king, to demand his release. Certainly, Fribourg would have enough firepower close by to lend credence to such a thing.
Still, it had been a useful sojourn. Five months, so far, aboard Jessica Keller’s flagship. Certainly, her crew held her in awe, but his star was even greater in that pantheon. Auberon was an absolute case study in the use of chance in campaigns. Perhaps he should write another book on tactics. What was it the ancient general had once said? “I would rather be lucky than good.”
Jessica Keller had been lucky. Amazingly lucky.
That luck was just about to run out.
Chapter XLI
Date of the Republic March 1, 394 Bunala
A chime at the hatch interrupted Daneel’s thoughts. Not that they had been anything useful, or focused, or whatever.
Thinking about her. The feel of her hand on his arm. The sound of her voice. Her smile.
Daneel sighed and set his mind to useful tasks. Whatever those might be.
He set the book on Aquitaine history back on his nightstand and rose from his rack. He could have opened the door by voice command, but this was a good excuse to stand and stretch. He had been doing too much reading lately.
Learning. Expanding.
Becoming.
He shook his head with a rueful smile and opened the door.
She stood there.
“Am I intruding?” she asked.
Apprehensive. Unsure.
Nervous.
Her?
“Not at all,” Daneel replied, somewhat taken aback. “Please, come in.”
He stepped back. The cabin was huge by the standards of his old 4–ring mothership, Sunset. Nearly twice as long, and three times as wide as his captain’s cabin. And this was just for middling–importance guests.
It suddenly felt tiny.
She did that to a room.
There was one chair, so he sat on the edge of the bed.
“Sit, Commander,” he said, gesturing to that chair, equally unsure himself.
She moved to the chair and poised on the edge of it.
Daneel realized that Jessica was out of uniform, possibly for the first time since he had met her. Tonight, she wore a dark blue tunic, long over dark gray slacks, rather than the forest–green uniform of the Republic. Her brown hair was just long enough to be pulled back into a tail. He could detect no makeup, but she didn’t need it.
Something was wrong with the chair. Or perhaps, she just had the fidgets. He felt the same way.
They stared at each other for a long moment. Wordless.
“Commander?” he said quietly.
“Please, Daneel,” she replied. “Call me Jessica.”
“Jessica.”
Daneel had finally read enough about Aquitaine culture to understand what that level of personal meant, at least between a man and a woman.
He felt hope flicker. Embers in the darkness.
“Daneel, I…”
Her words trailed off. Knowing her, there had probably been a speech prepared. Really knowing her, probably three.
He realized suddenly that she was no better at this sort of thing than he was.
The fear in her eyes made him nervous.
Daneel took a deep breath and leapt into space.
He mutely held out his hand to her.
She grasped it like an escape pod off a flaming wreck.
Her hands were warm, moist.
His were suddenly blocks of ice.
“Watching the stars over Callumnia,” she said finally, quietly shattering the silence that had engulfed them, “I thought about kissing you. Or slapping you.”