Petron

by Blaze Ward

  He decided to keep his opinions on the topic to himself, as Lady Moirrey had her reservations about her genius at killing people.

  Bedrov had roughed out four warship designs on virtual paper, finally trusting the Bartender to keep them permanent as needed, and able to send them to a plotter printer all cleaned up when Yan was ready for them.

  “Why even bother with a 1-ring?” Galen asked laconically, leaning his weight against the bar like an aging Lothario waiting for a wealthy ingénue to enter the joint.

  “It’s all your fault, kid,” Pops piped up from the corner where he sat and enjoyed a nice heff. “Without you and Badger with Jessica, I would have just stayed with the two cargo carriers and called it good.”

  “But are you overly ambitious in assuming that StarFighters will be gone within two to three years, Pops?” Uly Larionov spoke up. “The men around here won’t go easily. Plus, this thing is desperately undergunned.”

  “You’re calling a Light GunShip with a Pulsed-Three undergunned?” Bedrov interjected.

  “Against the Queen’s Own?” the shorter man answered. “Yes. They can still swarm you faster than you can swat them. It gets worse if you’re dealing with a flight wing from the interior nations, where their fighters use missiles as a primary weapon for engaging at range. You’ve got nothing to defend a small ship on its own, and two of them can’t cover each other.”

  “Plus, you should factor into your equations the Fast Strike Bombers you yourself designed, Yan,” the Bartender felt it necessary to add. “They can leap over intervening space, if they do it correctly, and ambush your GunShips as you currently have them designed.”

  “Well, crap.”

  Yan sounded slightly defeated, which was unfortunate, as the design would be extremely effective in five or eight years, once Lady Moirrey’s JumpMines became more widely used.

  Fast Strike Bombers worked at a relatively short range, taking advantage of surprise. Those mines would weaken their tactical usefulness quickly enough. Deploying them was the problem, as the Bartender seemed to identify it.

  “Barkeeps,” Moirrey spoke up now, a fierce glow on her face and her heartrate suddenly accelerating in a manner he had come to associate with excitement and genius, at least around Lady Moirrey. “Missiles be waste o’time, nuff nuff. What’s ’bout mountin’ a weak JumpDrive ontos an Archerfish-3 and bouncin’ them inside-outs ta fire?”

  The Bartender allowed his projection to blink in surprise. It seemed to be the correct human reaction, as neither he nor Carthage had ever worked with missiles as a tool. Displacer shields used by a Mark XXII Skymaster rendered them irrelevant.

  But he was a warrior, with three thousand years of human-time lifespan, something approaching one hundred and twenty million human years, given the speed of his processors and the elapsed millennia.

  Quickly, he projected the old design for an Archerfish firing a Type-3 beam on a new whiteboard in the corner away from where Dina slept. Batteries could be made smaller, if you didn’t intend to recharge the weapon later. Similarly, the aiming mechanism, at least the targeting computers, could be generally eliminated, if you just wanted the beam to fire forward on a line, without having to aim it at a moving target.

  A basic Mark XIV JumpDrive design, one of the great antiques that any competent machine shop could turn out, could be stuffed into the space freed up, without modifying the external shell, once he shifted a few components around. He did so as the group watched.

  “If asked, I will lie about ever having been present at such a conversation,” the Bartender announced in a voice only slight humorous.

  Lady Casey zu Wiegand, Emperor Karl VIII of Fribourg might not appreciate the weapon he had just designed, but he would also blame Lady Moirrey, if asked.

  It had been her idea. And it would eliminate Fast Strike Bombers as a threat, as well as any Buran warships that anyone might yet engage.

  “Slower and with more firing time,” Moirrey announced, moving over to the board and tapping on a few places.

  As it was her weapon, he made the adjustments. Less fuel. Smaller thruster nozzles. That opened space forward for another battery array that could be tapped to hold the beam for perhaps another six-tenths of a second, depending on the ambient conditions in JumpSpace.

  “Yuppers. That’ll do,” she announced happily. “What’s the dead zone generated, ya does that sorts o’thing?”

  Quickly, the Bartender did the math. Long-firing Type-3 still could not generate the cohesive disruption of a Primary, but done right, the radius of detonation should affect an area comparable to most fleet engagements. If you got the weapon midway between engaging sides, you should be able to dig a sinkhole in JumpSpace that touched both sides.

  He added his results and math to the side of the machinery specifications for Yan, Pops, and Moirrey to review.

  “What just happened?” Galen asked the room. “Why are you three maniacs laughing so hard?”

  It was true. The three engineers were apparently tickled pink by the weapon he was displaying. However, he refused to take the blame.

  “Lady Moirrey?” the Bartender asked.

  “Are those numbers believable?” Uly Larionov asked, standing to walk closer and muttering under his breath.

  “Yes, you old fart,” Pops replied. “But I’ll run them by hand later to verify. Galen, what Moirrey has just done is create a portable mine that we can launch at an invading Republic fleet, when those bastards come to play and bring II Augusta or one of her sisters. This will generate a zone where JumpSpace won’t hold you. If you drop that between your fleets, Fast Strike Bombers fall into RealSpace not long after they launch. If you put off a salvo of these things, or just detonate one outside your own hull, then they can’t escape you.”

  “Downside, Galen, you can’t escape either,” Yan spoke up. “As a defending fleet, we deploy them if we think we can take the bastards, but if they bring something like Casey had at the wedding, we need to launch them aft and then jump away, hoping that the zone traps them in place while we run like hell to someplace like Walea or Bunala. Again, big, nasty surprise the first time we use them. Then everyone has them. Really useful for pirates and police alike, week after next, though.”

  “So we were talking about Light GunShips here,” Galen replied. “We still think those are useless?”

  “Mebbe,” Moirrey beamed at all of them. “Mebbe nots. Missile storm still bads, but E-2 and C-1 donne carry nones, nor dem Fast Strike Bombers. Far less effective, so they gots to send missile fighters from the old fleet, or old cruisers and not Expeditionaries. But only after they gets roughed up first. And they canna use Jump-equipped missiles neither. Dunno if anyone back homes reads those chapters o’Mischief, bouts defeatin’ them, too.”

  “Okay, so this is far cheaper than anything else I expected,” Uly said. “Let’s put these into production right now, at least as far testing goes. Can one of you design me a missile pod that will mount on a MotherShip to let me put them into the fleet immediately?”

  “Missile pod, Uly?” Yan asked before the Bartender could frame the words politely.

  That went against everything he understood about Corynthe culture, and the man responsible for paying the fleet and the bureaucrats.

  “Yes, missile pod,” the Comptroller growled. “Put it on Kali-ma and she can fire these things out to break up enemy attacks tomorrow, far sooner than you can design me a new light battlecruiser. That puts every MotherShip into a really interesting place, as they can also go after enemy shipping when Lincolnshire freighters can’t run. Most captains would happily lose a fighter from the rings, or force everyone to adjust their docking assignments.”

  “Shit, that’s evil, you bastard,” Yan laughed. “Lemme sleep on it and I’ll send you something tomorrow. Figure I can probably get six missiles into a revolving-cylinder launcher like Aquitaine used to have on their old destroyers. That was back before they centralized their magazines and let the machines just pick up a missile
from the warehouse and use it.”

  “Good enough,” Uly said, turning now to face the Bartender. “Send me the specs and I’ll contact one of my skunkworks fabs to build me a couple dozen missiles in secret. Lady Moirrey should be the point of contact on technical questions.”

  “Noted,” the Bartender replied. “Delivered to your office.”

  “Okay,” Uly sighed, perhaps happily at the relatively low cost of another naval disruption. “What’s next?”

  “Ya solveded the Pulsed-3 design to my likin’,” Moirrey chirped, walking over to check on Dina, but the girl was deep in her current sleep cycle. “I gots a variant of the Bubble Gun to chats about.”

  “Variant?” Galen asked. “I thought those were only really useful against Buran? And too big to consider on anything less than the Expeditionary cruiser or something larger.”

  “Is,” she grinned. “Gots ta thinkin’ ’bouts a lesser version. No bubble at the end, and smaller power curve. Stills main-guns kinda thing, but splats someone hard on his snout insteads of two-handin’ him.”

  The bartender poured himself a new glass of Khan of the Mongols to sip and listened to the evil ideas Moirrey was sketching out, trying to find lines in his mind where he could stop development for long enough that the rest of the galaxy could catch up.

  Defending Corynthe was his primary mission, as determined by Ainsley Barret, who got to make those decisions, but he also wanted to make sure that men and women who had been happily-dedicated pirates a decade ago didn’t suddenly explode out on an unsuspecting galaxy, like the Muslim armies of the early Islamic Era, or the Mongols themselves who had inspired his new beer, centuries later.

  Carthage would have found such an outcome unacceptable, but the Bartender wasn’t sure that the five people in this room with him might not be able to do such a thing, even without his assistance. It was even worse when he considered that the Queen of the Pirates had already defeated two of the biggest star empires of the modern era.

  What could Jessica Keller do with these new weapons?

  CHAPTER XLIX

  IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 183/06/22. IFV VALIANT, HEMERA SYSTEM

  BECAUSE HE HAD PUT her in charge, Vo didn’t question why Centurion Victoria Ames had chosen to dress Centurion Andrea Velazquez in one of her army uniforms. It did make an odd symmetry to dinner, though, with the two women seated across from him, slightly diagonally each way. Centurion Maisuradze and Yeoman al-Salah completed that side of the table, so Vo seated only Captain Pitchford on this side with him. The visitors weren’t important enough to even suggest meeting Casey in the flesh, even were the fiction that she was aboard truth, and Denis had no business being near these spies.

  So, six for dinner. More than the Graces, but less than the Muses, as was considered the formula for any successful dinner party, according to one of those bizarre, Imperial manuals on deportment he had absorbed along the way.

  Dinner had been fish. Previously frozen then served in a spicy cream sauce heavy on butter, garlic, and cayenne. Steamed vegetables, also from the deep freeze. At least desert had been a layered, chocolate cake that did not betray its origins.

  Denis had left strict orders with the various wardrooms to start every meal with the oldest reserves in the larder, and work forward. And to keep loss and spoilage to as absolute a minimum as possible. Nobody was going hungry, but every day they could stay on station here was one more day Vo could paralyze this entire portion of the frontier.

  Eventually, the fleet would have to withdraw, but hopefully he would have made his point by then.

  One way or the other.

  They were done eating. Stewards were in the process of removing all the plates and serving coffee and tea. Vo nodded to Curator Kamlesh Ozawa, standing at ease along the wall and watching. Immediately, the man withdrew, a motion noted by everyone else at the table with a certain level of introduced tension that had been absent while bread was broken.

  Velazquez turned to steel in the space of a heartbeat. Interestingly, so did Ames, almost like they were mirrors.

  Iakov Street and Hans Danville entered quickly, bringing with them chairs that they used to take their place at the table on either side of their general. Velazquez eyed them about like a farmer did the first snake of spring.

  “Centurion Velazquez, this man is Decanus Iakov Street, Senior Enlisted Man in charge of my bodyguard element, known as Cutlass Force, when neither myself nor Centurion Ames are around,” Vo introduced her to the last darts champion of the Maltese Cross. “The other man is Curator Hans Danville. According to the physician on Petron who treated the prisoner, Danville’s bullet was the one extracted from his body. He is also the man who led the capture team and made sure our prisoner made it to the hospital alive.”

  She studied the two men closely, a mug of coffee in one hand steaming slightly.

  “Go ahead,” she said, after pulling out one of the recording devices and placing it on the table. Al-Salah did the same a moment later.

  Danville spoke first. Vo hadn’t been coherent enough at the time to understand what Cutlass had done after he was shot. Not until so much later that he was reading collected reports and accounts did it make sense.

  The morning still read like a lurid thriller novel, but even random civilians on the scene had given similar accounts.

  One shot downrange that hit Vo. A fusillade of return fire until it stopped just as suddenly as it started. Cutlass going full tactical, including a new gymnastics event Vo would add to all future training curricula, where one squad led two others, and got both of them into an open, second story window in the least amount of time in order to capture a flag hidden in that room.

  At Vo’s instructions, references to Dash or Michelle were left out of what was provided to the Aquitaine folks. They didn’t need to know how close those two women had gotten to being executed by Iakov as a precaution. Nobody needed to know that part, except Casey, Torsten, and Jessica.

  Both women had eventually been cleared, once they’d told Jessica everything they knew, including the fact that they had filed an updated workout-run map to the Ambassador as part of normal security, in case either of them needed to be found.

  Judit Chavarría had been the person notified. It was rather easy to put two and two together at that point, and David had been notified by courier.

  Eventually, Vo hoped that both Dash and Michelle would forgive him.

  Street went next, laying out his story as the other on-site commander when they got to the hospital, he and Ames having split responsibilities until Casey and the Grand Admiral could be notified.

  Finally, the two men were done. Velazquez asked a few questions, but she had already read the reports the two men had filed. They were dismissed fairly quickly.

  “I have one question for you, General zu Arlo,” she said, looking across the table at him. “Why are you going to all this effort?”

  Vo nodded. That was the heart of everything, wasn’t it?

  Why bother?

  Aquitaine apparently wanted a war bad enough to provoke everyone else into providing one. The other nations had been happy to oblige.

  Only he had been willing to grind everything to a crawl. Him, who probably had the most reason to want to snap back hard and crush things.

  “My fiancé,” he answered finally. “The woman you will know as Karl VIII, Emperor of Fribourg, whom I call simply Casey. She doesn’t want this. Her stated goal was to find a way for Fribourg to live in peace with both the Republic and the Protectorate of Man, Centurion. To end all the wars, as much as possible. Apparently, that is too much to ask from certain elements who think they would be better off in a conflagration.”

  He took a sip of his coffee and let his mind find the words.

  “I will approach this like I do most things, as methodically as I was trained to by the same navy that has shaped your life and career, Centurion,” Vo continued. “That means getting to the bottom of who did this, and trying to understand why. It may mean
that I convince the Emperor that peace is an impossible dream, and that Aquitaine must simply be destroyed, in order to eliminate them as a future threat to the Empire and the galaxy. She is young, Centurion. Younger than you, and she looks forward with an eye measuring things in generations and centuries. My job, for the rest of my life, will be to protect her and her throne. But more importantly, her dream, and that of her father, Karl VII, that we could live in peace, if enough people demanded it.”

  He studied this young lawyer. Watched the impact of his words on her.

  “Why am I doing this?” he finally completed the thought in his mind. “Because I wanted to give Aquitaine the opportunity to fix this crime, before it became necessary for me to do the job. My methods would lack subtlety, Centurion. I would simply smash your entire house down and leave you to sleep in the burning, salted ruins. If it comes to that, I will. That is a promise I will make to you now, and you will be able to find enough people on Ladaux or Anameleck Prime to tell you what that kind of a promise is worth from me. Does that answer your question?”

  Dead silence. The sort of thing you got in a graveyard just before the moon rose, when the fog was catching the lights of the city beyond the wrought-iron fencing, maybe convincing you that ghosts were rising from their graves, hungry, and if you made a sound, they would find your hiding place.

  “It does, sir,” she said.

  Vo watched her reach out and cut the recording. She rose. Her two assistants did as well, so Vo, Ames, and Pitchford joined them.

  “I will take my leave of you, General zu Arlo,” she said in a weary voice. “Thank you for the opportunity to meet the principals and hear the stories directly from them. My orders from here are to deliver your packet, and my findings, into the hands of the First Lord of the Fleet. I can promise you nothing more than that, but you have my word as an officer and a gentlewoman of Aquitaine that I will accomplish that task, or die trying.”

  “That is all we can ask for, Centurion Velazquez,” Vo nodded and shook her hand as she offered it. “The war can yet be stopped, if enough people are willing to try. Tell Kosnett that I will be departing his system shortly, but if I see him on my side of the border, he can expect no mercy whatsoever. Am I clear?”