by Blaze Ward
Someone else who watched old musketeer videos.
She smiled to herself. His stiletto would be nimbler. Her blade heavier.
He would lunge. It was there in the set of the hips, the drawing of the back leg under instead of keeping it out as a pivot, ready to crab–step again. It was there in the wrist, suddenly rigid instead of flowing.
Jessica flowed to her right to create movement.
There.
Ian Zhao was good. She was going to bleed. There was just no way to avoid his speed.
Jessica didn’t have to. She had watched him fly Kali–ma. He thought in two–dimensions like the rest of the pirates. Brawlers with a single blade.
She pushed off and up as she flowed, turning an aerial cartwheel over the lunging sword.
The surprise on his face was priceless.
Jessica felt the kiss on her hip. It might have missed a man, or a woman with no curves. Cost of doing business, especially as a woman in this place.
She landed square and rotated, pivoting her right foot back first to open the bleeding hip. Her center turned, rotating her stomach, her breasts, her shoulders. The arms came along for the ride, long lines moving like whips, hands at the end like bolos.
A lighter blade would have left a vicious slash. Messy. Unprofessional.
Bad killing.
But that nasty little cleaver, barely sharp enough to bone a chicken, impacted with a dull, hollow thump. That rich, crunching sound a carcass makes just before it goes into the stew pot.
Bones separating.
Death.
Jessica flashed out with her open hand and caught Ian Zhao’s wrist as he sought to gut her with his own blade. They stood like dancers, like lovers.
She was stronger than she looked. And angrier.
There are sensitive bones in the hand and wrist. She felt every kilo of Arnulf’s betrayal, every moment of Daneel’s love making, every secret giggle with Desianna.
She transformed the rage into fuel and let it all flow down into her left hand, crushing those little bones in Ian Zhao’s hand and preventing him from killing her.
She sawed the cleaver in her right hand, but it was wedged deep, high into his chest, through the thorax and into lungs.
Blood leaked around it, but not much.
More came out of his mouth.
In the videos, the hero was always supposed to say something pithy, something memorable, right about now.
She didn’t have it in her. Instead, she held him close, like a lover, like a dancer, and watched the life flow out of his eyes.
Death was sudden. One moment a flicker. The next, nothing.
Jessica stepped back as Ian Zhao’s body fell limply forward. She let his weight pull the cleaver from his ribs, even as she caught his sword and held it.
Not quite Valse d’Glaive, but with these two blades, she could kill any man here.
She turned and gave every single one of these captains a look that conveyed that utter, calm conviction.
The room fell silent again. The noise had apparently been solid, obvious only by the sudden absence.
Jessica Keller came back to the present.
“Does anyone else demand to die this day?” she called.
From any of the men, that would have been a challenge. A machismo thing. Braggadocio.
From her, it was a promise. Simple as that.
And they knew it.
And accepted it.
And they accepted her.
Jessica Keller, Queen of the Pirates.
Movement caught her eye. Jing Du was making a break for it, fleeing towards a hatch behind the stage, no doubt to escape her and rally his allies.
“Someone stop him,” she pointed, using the bloody cleaver for emphasis.
Heads turned. Some men took a step to try to do something, but it was obvious they were just going to get in each other’s way.
Jing Du made it to the open hatch and stopped.
If she hadn’t seen it, with her own eyes, she would have called the story–teller a liar to his face.
Jing Du stopped moving. And began to levitate off the deck in a slow, elegant motion.
And then he drifted backwards into the room, followed by a shadow of utter darkness that looked at first like Arnulf’s ghost made flesh, made Vengeance. It had that size, that mass, that solidity. It resolved itself into Auberon’s dragoon, her two–meter–tall ground combat master.
Navin the Black.
The man had caught Jing Du by the neck. Jessica had studied enough anatomy to know it usually took minutes to strangle the average man with your bare hands, with the victim normally fighting you all the while.
The dragoon wasn’t crushing Jing Du’s throat. He had picked the man up by wrapping one giant hand delicately around the chancellor’s neck and lifting on the underside of his jawbone, perhaps pinching those two sensitive nerve clusters behind the ears as he did so.
Jing Du hung perfectly still as this terrible ogre transported him back into the chamber. Perhaps he swayed a little, as one might when all rational thought has fled and only gravity was active.
The dragoon strode to the platform and mounted it in one stride, truly a dark angel, a demon, an ogre. He looked down upon the room from his great elevation and smiled, head shaved bald and carefully–trimmed Vandyke white with vast maturity.
“Your Majesty commands,” he rumbled.
Dragons have that smile when dwarves stumble into their lairs.
The silence was just as intense as the sound had been.
And then the room erupted in cheers.
Ξ
Her flag centurion brought her back to earth.
“We have a problem,” Enej said as he stepped forward and handed her back her sports bra. Daneel and Desianna also surged forward, but kept a step back.
The fighting circle evaporated like a soap bubble.
Arnulf’s staff, no damn it, her staff, took charge, under the watchful eye of Auberon’s marines. The pirate captains might have blades as a mark of their manhood and authority. Her marines had guns and attitude. Everyone else was going to be exceedingly polite.
Jessica handed the blades to Daneel and took a towel from an unseen hand to wipe herself dry.
The men here had seen enough of her chest today, so she quickly climbed back into the sports bra and undertunic. The rest could wait.
“An Imperial squadron has dropped out of Jumpspace,” Enej continued as she dressed. “Auberon and David Rodriguez aboard Sky Dancer have both launched everything and challenged them, but they continue to come in. They appear to be led by that missing 4–ring, Wei Chi and Garth Agano.”
“What are we facing?” Jessica asked, oblivious to the rest of the mob standing around them listening.
“From da Vinci’s scans,” Enej said, “three of the big 4–ring motherships, Wei Chi, Valhalla, and Siberia, plus a 3–ring, a 2–ring, and a 1–ring. The Imperials have an Escort Carrier, two Carrier Tugs, and a trio of escort corvettes.”
A laugh got her attention. It was harsh and mirthful. Inappropriate.
She turned to Jing Du, standing now, with her dragoon’s paw holding him by the scruff of the neck.
“You have failed, Aquitaine,” he sneered. “Your reign will be barely longer than Ian Zhao’s. By nightfall, another king will be crowned.”
Jessica felt the growl start deep in her stomach. Was it going to be necessary to destroy Corynthe in order to make it a better place? She thought of her uncle’s farm, how he burned the fields in the fall, after the harvest, to fertilize them for the spring.
Very well. If it took that level of destruction to get their attention, it would have to do.
This would be the diplomacy of the blade. The only kind these people apparently understood.
“Put me on the general push, Enej,” she said sharply.
“Go ahead.”
“Pilots and captains of Corynthe, this is Jessica Keller,” she said, intoning her words carefully, formally, to
deep space, just as she had done when she read aloud her orders to take command of Auberon, once upon an eternity ago. “By right of combat, I am your queen. I will have your oaths, or I will have your heads.”
She paused to let the words sink in.
Queen of the Pirates. Yes, it would be the diplomacy of the blade.
“The enemy squadron is Wei Chi and her allies,” she continued. “If they will not surrender or retreat, they must be destroyed. Otherwise, you will become just another world suffering under the Imperial yoke. I will not allow that.”
She paused again, looking around the mob until she found Ian Zhao’s second in command, a man named Yan Bedrov. He looked nothing like the former king, so she hoped that he was not a brother, or a cousin.
Or a fool.
Jessica fixed him with a look that commanded.
The man blinked for a moment, deer in the headlights, before he understood and dropped to one knee before her, head bowed in duty.
As if on cue, the rest of the room did the same. Including Daneel and Desianna. Within moments, only Jessica and her people and Jing Du remained standing.
Now, time to rattle cages.
“Cho Ayaka Nakamura, callsign Furious,” Jessica continued, naming the hotshot girl pilot from Sky Dancer, “you will take command of the Corynthe flight wing.”
“But I’m not senior, ma’am,” the young woman gasped into the radio.
“Did I stutter, Furious?”
“No, Your Majesty.”
“Is this too much for you to handle?” she asked, well aware that every pilot was marked by their ego.
“Negative.” Furious sounded like her namesake now.
“Then take command.”
“Roger that,” Furious replied. “Hey, Enej–baby, can everyone hear me, flag–boy?”
Jessica watched her flag centurion turn beet red.
Obviously, he and the pilot had apparently gone beyond a purely formal working relationship somewhere along the way. She would have to ask him at some point, but not today.
“Affirmative, Cho,” Enej said, apparently grinding his teeth in embarrassment as the men around him smiled.
“Right,” Furious called. “You heard the boss. All friendly fliers identify yourselves with a radio beacon of Monarch.”
“Monarch?” a man’s voice called, one of the other pilots out there. “What’s up with that, Nakamura?”
“Jessica Keller, Queen of the Pirates, Wolfhound,” Furious replied. “We are now The Queen’s Own.”
Jessica smiled regally at the men around her.
The Queen’s Own.
Ξ
Jessica took three strides to stand before the man who had been Ian Zhao’s right hand.
He looked up as her boots appeared in his line of sight.
It was the look of a man who expected to be next on the chopping block.
“I will take command of Kali–ma,” she said, loud enough to be heard by everyone, but speaking only to him. “We will go out to meet these Imperial interlopers and convince them to go home.”
She waited for him to nod, and start breathing again as she nodded regally down at him.
Jessica turned to the rest of the room and sized them all up, her face turning more serious, more ominous.
“Warlock,” she said to the man, “you will take charge of Supernova. Other warship captains will join us, or resign their commands, right now.”
Heads looked up at her and nodded. She gestured them to stand. Her anger at this moment probably could have soured milk.
“If you command a freighter or stripper, you will remain here with my palace staff and my marines, until I get back.”
Jessica softened her scowl to smile at these men. It was the same smile she remembered on Nils Kasum’s face more than once.
Her life depended on the captains around her now.
“Gentlemen, Garth Agano wants a war. Let us not keep him waiting.”
Chapter XLVI
Date of the Republic March 14, 394 Above Petron
The bridge of the 4–ring Mothership Kali–ma was cramped. Not as tight and claustrophobic as CR–264 or Rajput, but nowhere near as open as Auberon, or even Brightoak. Still, Jessica found it homey.
She sat where Ian Zhao had most recently been resident. Before her, on her right, her flag centurion sat, with his comm–marine and the radio close by. Enej’s shadow, Yeoman Orly, was the smallest marine Auberon carried, both by side and weight, and, according to Navin the Black, probably the meanest. She smiled at the pirates like a woman getting ready to beat up an entire dock–side bar by herself.
On the opposite side was the man who had been Ian Zhao’s second in command. Yan Bedrov was tall and skinny, and still very nervous. He also had a marine escort, but this one was not a radio tech. Instead, Navin had sent First–Rate Spacer Arlo.
The two marines could not have looked less alike, but they watched the bridge like hawks, conveying the certainty that they could take on the pirate vessel’s entire crew alone and win.
Just like she was about to do.
“Gentlemen,” she announced as everyone settled. “I don’t know your ship that well, and I don’t know you. I will assume you are as good as my crew on Auberon until you show me otherwise. And Auberon’s people are very good.”
She turned to size up Bedrov, her new first officer. “Yan,” she said simply, “I will command the Flag, that is, all vessels. You will handle general orders and translate them into commands for this crew.”
She waited until he nodded and then pointed at Enej.
“This man is my flag centurion,” she continued. “He will transmit orders to the rest of the friendly forces. You command the flagship, so everything Corynthe forces do will be based on our movements. Questions?”
Yan Bedrov bit his lip in thought. “What do you know about Motherships, Captain?” he asked, falling back into some level of what passed for normalcy, at least for him. Professionalism. It was a good start.
“Good defensive armaments and shields,” Jessica replied. “Nothing in the way of big guns, since you rely on the flight wing for your hitting power. Auberon or Rajput could slaughter a mothership or one of the Imperial vessels if we get close. We have to stay back because we can’t take on that many fighters.”
“Right,” he agreed. “And the sensors are kinda crap, because who needs good scanners, except to send the rings off. Permission to set an initial course for the squadron?”
“What do you have in mind, Bedrov?”
“Bring her around to zero–five–zero, come to max speed, plus ten degrees,” he called to the pilot.
She watched him plot his movement on a flat screen until Enej and the comm–marine brought their projector on line and put the sphere where he could reach.
“Oh, that’s nice,” Bedrov said as he moved the image around. “Here, Cap’n. Puts us in line with the sun on their approach vector. Probably not worth much, but he were an ijit for coming in where he did.”
“They were sitting out there waiting for the coup,” Jessica retorted, careful not to invoke their dead captain right now. “I like this course. Initiate it and have the Corynthe forces form on us.”
“That reminds me.” She turned to Enej. “Open a channel and hail CR–264. I really need him right now.”
The flag centurion nodded and spoke into a sound–deadening microphone, one hand absently holding on to an earpiece.
Enej turned to her with a wicked smile. He flipped a switch on the comm to fill the bridge with Robbie Aeliaes’ voice.
“Flag, this is Brightoak and an escort squadron from Lincolnshire. Requesting orders.”
Brightoak? Here? This was suddenly, at worst, a fair fight.
Jessica smiled wickedly herself.
Yan Bedrov began to look nervous. “Captain?”
Jessica reassured him with a smile as she reached for the mic.
“Brightoak, this is the Flag, aboard Kali–ma,” she said, quickly doing the math in he
r head. “Attach your two local escorts to Auberon while you bring CR–264 to join up with my squadron soonest.”
“On the way, Fleet Lord Keller,” Robbie said with the same sarcastic smile in his voice she remembered from when she had commanded the destroyer squadron from Brightoak and he had had Vigilant.
Wheels began to turn in her head.
“Enej, what’s the balance of forces?”
The projection zoomed back to a much larger area.
“Enemy forces include nine carriers of various sizes and three escort corvettes.”
Nine. Jessica was briefly in awe, even considering that they were second–tier vessels and pirates.
Nine carriers.
“Incoming forces appear to be right about one hundred melee fighters and roughly twenty–five heavier craft, comparable to our S–11 Bombers, Damocles and Starfall.”
He spun the projection again, adding four new dots for the Aquitaine Destroyer Leader named Brightoak and three Fleet Escorts/Cutters to the two groups of friendly vessels.
“We have Auberon, plus three carriers, Kali–ma, Supernova, and Sky Dancer. And apparently three fighters from the 1–ring mothership Baba Yaga. Captain Larionov sent the only three that could fly, while his ship and the rest are undergoing long–term repairs out on the lunar platform.”
“Larionov?”
“You borrowed his blade today,” the flag centurion said diplomatically.
Oh.
“We have fifty to fifty–five melee fighters, fifteen strike fighters, plus Necromancer and Cayenne. There is nothing on the other side comparable to the DropShip, let alone the GunShip.”
“They have double our flight wing. We have firepower,” Jessica smiled. “And Moirrey.”
She considered the projection. It was messy.
Auberon sat at one point of a triangle, with Rajput and the two Lincolnshire vessels close by and the whole Wing airborne. Cayenne was probably asking for permission to fly with whatever strike she ordered. He was like that.
Her three Motherships were breaking out of close proximity to the orbital station and climbing up out of the gravity well as Brightoak and CR–264 raced down and around to join them.
The enemy force sat much closer to the edge of the gravity well. Still inside, where they couldn’t quickly escape to Jumpspace, but far enough away that they could probably flee if they felt they needed to.