Petron

by Blaze Ward

  The hull rang as Washington’s Primaries finally opened up. Heavy, hollow thumps. Qin Lun was moving slowly so she could stay right in the middle of the combined fighter wing and protect them from missile fire with all her Type-1-Pulse turrets. That left power for the shields to be reinforced, especially since the only Primaries incoming were from the cruiser. Neither carrier was firing any, and the destroyers were shitstorming missiles as fast as Ainsley, Wiley, and Qin Lin could kill them.

  Somebody really hadn’t updated their invasion plans in too long. Or they had ignored the fact that Pops Nakamura and Yan Bedrov lived here. To say nothing of Lady Moirrey.

  “Firing,” Donal barked, thumping his keyboard for effect.

  Galen had flat refused to let him add a musical note to each beam. Fribourg and Aquitaine both did that. Claimed that it let them track weapons fire audibly, but Galen wasn’t fooled. They were just teenage boys wanting to blow shit up with cool sound effects.

  StarFlower hit better than a Primary at this range. Three Type-3 beams that lased into coherence at the target, when you did it just right. It helped that Washington was coming straight down into fight, so Donal and Qin Lun could line up to pound it. Thirteen more Type-3 beams went down range as a deluge, with only one ship over there to engage.

  That Expeditionary carrier would be a pain in the ass shortly, but she was still lighter armed, all things considered, than his cruiser. And Moirrey had knee-capped them with the mine. All those stupid bombers were just now getting organized again and starting to come down to fight in star space.

  Galen watched in real time as the cruiser’s front shielding failed. Arrogant git still thought he would be facing wimpy MotherShips like Kali-ma, riding on Galen’s flank. Those sorts of warships had no choice but to run in the face of a heavy cruiser, since even Wiley was desperately outgunned.

  Good thing she had a Patrol Cruiser to breakwater those morons.

  “Cruiser’s hurt bad, boss,” Donal called without looking up. “Figure he breaks off in a second when he decides not to get the rest of his teeth kicked in.”

  “Are the twins still just hammering the one destroyer?” Galen checked his boards and saw the one hotspot.

  “Affirmative,” Donal laughed. “Bastard’s leaking atmosphere on his bow right now, but holding the line.”

  “What’s RAN Alexandria up to?” Galen shifted the screen around.

  The two heavy ships had sailed in line astern like some fool on the surface of an ocean. The cruiser up front, presumably, to break the ice, which was exactly dumb, because the carrier behind had better shields, hull, and guns.

  “Following traditional strike carrier tactics, according to Jessica,” Donal’s laugh was more like a braying donkey now. “Washington leading has the carrier blind to engaging us until he moves out of the way. Got time for one salvo somewhere before we’re suddenly dueling with someone who can maybe hurt us.”

  “Thought so,” Galen grunted. “Hit that same destroyer that the girls have gone after with everything that can range and arc, and then tell Monarch to go after the heavy flight wing with everything they’ve got. I don’t want to be stung to death by all those bombers and their Type-2’s.”

  “You and me, both, boss.” Donal concentrated. “When’s Ainsley get stupid?”

  “I’m guessing she’s going after the big jobby, Donal,” Galen said.

  Around them, the bridge lights flickered hard and then went out, coming on a second later with only the emergencies.

  “What the hell was that?” Galen asked the darkened room as dust got kicked up by whatever mule had just kicked them.

  “Carrier found us,” Donal explained. “Someone has a clue, as it looks like most of his Threes are tuned for range rather than damage. That was a broadside.”

  “Crap. Shift me to a forward flank on the bastard, then,” Galen ordered, in spite of Donal doing things. “Hit him once and then start sniping on the fighters. Remember, all we got to do at this point is hold the line long enough for the surprise.”

  “Trying,” Donal said. “She wants to party and doesn’t really want to take no for an answer.”

  The hull crunched again, but Galen also watched one of the destroyers suddenly stop firing anything. If it was a fish, this would be the point where it rolled belly skyward or sank with all hands, but a ship didn’t usually do that, so it just kind of shut down.

  Now he had to face off with RAN Alexandria.

  Things were definitely messy.

  CHAPTER LVIII

  DATE OF THE REPUBLIC SEPTEMBER 2, 405 CARGO GUNSTATION-1, PETRON

  THIS WAS NOT her first battle. Not by a long shot.

  Ainsley had been there at First Petron.

  First Ballard.

  First Thuringwell.

  First Trusski.

  Second Petron was just a gang rumble in the park on a spring day, by comparison.

  Still, RAN Washington had gotten both eyes blackened by Galen. RAN Alexandria was returning the favor now, but it was like two Sumo wrestlers getting tired. RAN Mongol had gone silent, starting to tumble ever so slightly as it had lost control.

  Fighter casualties had been better than she expected and worse than she hoped. Missiles cruisers were like that in this sort of scrum. Of the MotherShips, only Kali-ma had taken any fire, but Sky Dancer and Warduck were the only ones that had Type-3 beams modern enough to shoot anything, so the rest largely stayed well out of range.

  But for Moirrey’s mines, friendlies would have probably been splattered hard by the bomber strikes. And this stunt would only work once, but it only had to be today.

  “Rocket Frog and Neon Pink, what are your statuses?” Ainsley called over the line.

  Both replied with smiley faces rather than words. Probably good enough. They were dead-still and outside the major fighter mess, pounding away like metronomes at any ship that turned their way or gave them a good target.

  Ainsley concentrated on her main target: RAN Adamant. She didn’t know First Fleet Lord Gotzon Bengoetxea, even by name, but the fact that he introduced himself that way said a lot about his personality. Especially in the days of the First Centurions.

  “You ever heard of the guy in command over there?” Ainsley asked her partner in crime idly.

  “Not at all,” Yan grunted. “But given the situation, I would expect they would pick someone who hated Keller with the fire of a thousand suns, just on general principle. Last thing you want is to send one of her friends out here and have the guy switch sides.”

  “Yeah,” Ainsley grunted. She glanced over at Yan. “Thoughts on Fleet Carriers?”

  “A little more rugged than an old 4-ring MotherShip,” he shrugged. “Two Primaries. Couple of Threes. Most of his firepower are Type-2’s designed to keep enemy fighters off his back. And the two corvettes he kept back as defense aren’t going to matter with what’s coming.”

  “Do we warn him?” Ainsley asked, still feeling a twinge of her old training underneath the façade of a pirate captain.

  “Shit, no,” Yan snarled. “He came in here and ordered us to surrender or be destroyed.”

  “How close are you to ready?” she asked.

  “Technically, I could have hit him five minutes ago,” Yan turned knife-fighter serious. “Neither of us are moving relative and he’s inside maximum range. I plan to hit him with the first twelve as a single salvo.”

  “And the other four?” Ainsley checked her boards. Nobody yet locked on her as a target. Just a navigational hazard.

  “In case one of the corvettes gets uppity,” Yan laughed. “Skin him and eat him for dinner. How are we doing? I haven’t looked outside the hull.”

  “Galen owes you a bottle of wine,” Ainsley laughed. “He’s beating his second cruiser hull to death right now, even if he’s going to need a major shipyard hitch tomorrow when this is done. Kali-ma’s doing okay, but Wiley’s just sniping. The fighters would have murdered us, but they’ve never recovered from the pounce that failed. Both sides are d
own more than fifty percent each, but the Twins are shooting anything that moves, so they’re getting edge kills.”

  A comm line beeped. Wiley.

  “Go ahead,” Ainsley said. “We’re just about in position.”

  “That’s what I wanted to hear,” Wiley breathed. “Galen’s just about done for and I can’t save him. Stand by.”

  Ainsley brought the engines to idle and channeled everything she had left over into the forward shields.

  “Attention, Invading Fleet, this is Corynthe Rear Admiral Shiori Ness,” Wiley called in the clear. If Death had a deep, alto voice when she came for you. “If you do not surrender, you will be destroyed. You have thirty seconds to comply.”

  “Your death will be slow and measured, pirates,” First Fleet Lord Bengoetxea snarled back at her on the same channel.

  To punctuate his threats, the big Fleet Carrier fired both of its Primaries at Kali-ma. One hit, which was pretty good for such extreme range, but Wiley’s shields held it.

  “Ainsley, my personal honor has been satisfied,” Wiley said on the private channel. “Kill that son of a bitch.”

  “Yan?” she looked over at her man and smiled.

  Yan took a deep breath and smiled like an angel. He pressed the big purple button in the middle of his screen and leaned back.

  The hull rang loudly with the sudden hum of twelve Primary cartridges all detonating in unison. A dozen beams each came into focus on the bow of the antique freighter. Death raced down range at light speed and liberated itself on the shields of the enemy flagship.

  Well, as much of the shields as could hold. From the screen, it looked like eight hits, maybe nine. Damned good shooting with what Yan had jury-rigged. Man was lucky and blessed, but she already knew that.

  Adamant’s shields probably could have taken two hits without stressing. Three would have caused serious leaks in a number of places, and maybe brought down a whole shield facing.

  The Fleet Carrier looked like a dandelion caught in a sudden wind, spewing puffballs into the air, except those were hull parts and human bodies suddenly exploding outwards as metal sections failed and things caught fire.

  “Wiley, you want him intact?” Yan asked. “Pretty sure I can break his spine right now, like splitting a diamond.”

  “Hold for now,” the woman said, cutting the line.

  “RAN forces, this will be your last warning,” Rear Admiral Ness suddenly sounded like one of Alber’s War Goddesses as she broadcast on a general frequency. “My next order will be the red flag. If you do not surrender now, we will take no prisoners. Am I understood?”

  Ainsley wondered if those fools would go ahead and decide to fight to the death today. It wasn’t the Corynthe way, but Aquitaine had never attacked like this before. And they probably hadn’t figured out how far they were from being able to run. Even Jessica had sailed up like an Ambassador and made nice with the locals.

  The Republic would never forget this. Probably never forgive it, either.

  “Rear Admiral Ness, this is Command Centurion Kasymyra Arno aboard RAN Adamant,” a new voice suddenly came over the air. “I have the flag. I would like to discuss terms of surrender.”

  “Where is the First Fleet Lord, Centurion?” Wiley’s voice was like a mouth full of shark teeth, ragged and hungry.

  There was a pause before the woman answered.

  “First Fleet Lord Gotzon Bengoetxea is dead, Rear Admiral,” Arno said quietly. “That last salvo went through the flag bridge with one hundred percent casualties.”

  “Here are my terms, Aquitaine,” Wiley’s voice moved a shade closer to human. But only a shade. “Your vessels are forfeit. Your crews will surrender and be taken into custody until enough troop transports can be hired to haul them as far as 3374 Rohini in Lincolnshire. Any more resistance will be crushed so utterly that none of you will ever make it home, otherwise.”

  “Those are not standard terms, Corynthe,” Arno’s voice found some anger.

  “Aquitaine has never formally declared war on us, Arno,” Wiley said. “Just Lincolnshire. You aren’t flying Lincolnshire colors today, so you are just pirates, as far as Queen Jessica’s law is concerned. You’re still getting better than you deserve, because the law calls for a minimum ten years in prison for acts of piracy such as this. I could hang you all legally. Do you wish to press your luck?”

  “Negative, Corynthe,” Arno said. “We will accept your terms. Any medical assistance or rescue operations you can supply would be helpful, as Adamant is not even flight capable at present, to say nothing of landing craft on our flight decks.”

  “Order your Flight Wings to land on the planet below,” Wiley said. “We will supply coordinates where they will be safe. That clears the skies for rescue operations to begin.”

  Yan leaned back and blew out a huge breath as Ainsley felt the craziness ebb out of the room. This had been worse than going after Buran, something she hadn’t thought was possible.

  “Now what?” she asked, leaning over to kiss him.

  Yan returned the kiss with the sort of hunger than understood just how close things had gotten, and how easily they might have had to flee.

  “Now we make the music play faster,” Yan said. “We’re just broken their sword, now we need to break their leg.”

  CHAPTER LIX

  IMPERIAL FOUNDING: 183/08/17. IFV VALIANT, CERANO SYSTEM

  AS NEAR AS Tom could remember, stalking the corridors of his old flagship, he had never been into or through the Cerano system. It didn’t have much of anything to recommend it, other than location on the way to other places. The planet itself exported grains and vegetables from vast fields that ranged across the southern temperate belt, with so little axial tilt that it was always late spring.

  At least he had been able to purchase enough wheat and corn to keep his squadron topped completely off. And, no doubt, engineers on every damned ship in the squadron were working diligently on the equipment necessary to ferment it all into beer or whiskey, but that wouldn’t impact discipline.

  Hell, the worst that might happen is that someone came up with a really good recipe and decided to retire here and start a distillery to get rich. Weirder things were happening all around him.

  Tom nodded to the pair of marines guarding the conference room and entered. Denis was already there, as was Vo. Yasuko and Everett came in a few moments after he got settled. There were other people he could have invited, but Tom’s humor was a little thin today. Vo’s looked even worse. Any of the captains he might have brought along to talk would have probably just irritated him at this point.

  “What do we know?” Tom asked as the meeting got started.

  He’d been with them for a week getting caught up, having finally tracked the fleet down once it stopped moving around quite so constantly.

  “I have had a chat with the local planetary President,” Vo smiled in a way that didn’t suggest the other man had gotten a word in edgewise. “He understands that Salonnian hands are not clean in this affair. And that I’ll remember that next time they want to cause Casey any problems. He has seen the charging packet we sent with Phil Kosnett and is transmitting a copy up and down the border here as well. It at least makes Lincolnshire and Aquitaine out to be worse than whichever Syndicate ended up working with Horvat. I do plan to treat that group to my own brand of justice, one of these days.”

  “Meaning?” Denis spoke up, a mug of tea in one hand steaming lightly.

  “Meaning that for too long, the corruption around here has been ignored,” Vo said. “It’s just easier to buy off politicians and oligarchs than to break them and institute honest government. That may have been a mistake that should be corrected, after the current war is completed.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought you meant,” Denis nodded and turned to Tom. “Do we end up burning the entire fringe to the ground when this is all done?”

  “It’s not that bad,” Tom started to say, before Denis cut him off.

  “You honest
ly think Jessica’s going to leave anything like the current incarnation of Lincolnshire intact, Tom?” he demanded in a sharp, quiet voice. “Vo’s talking about fixing Salonnia. We may end up bringing down the government of Aquitaine, in order to deal with things. And Vishnu only knows what’s going on in Corynthe right now. Throw in Casey and the former Protectorate of Man and this neighborhood won’t be recognizable in twenty years.”

  “Would that be a bad thing?” Vo rumbled.

  “Can you guarantee you aren’t making it worse?” Denis fired back. “Are we destabilizing all these governments so badly that you’re maybe forcing the rise of Octavian as a result? Killing the Roman Republic and replacing it with another Empire?”

  “Rome was stable for another fifteen hundred years,” Vo pointed out.

  “No, the Roman Empire in some form or another lasted that long, but the Rome we know from history went barely two centuries before it was completely exhausted and overrun by barbarian outsiders only calling themselves Roman while starting constant civil wars,” Denis growled as Tom watched, amazed at the reaction coming over the man. “After that, it splintered and the original West became fully barbaric and the East held on for a time, but it was Roman only in name while Greek became the dominant language and culture. Is that what we’re setting out to do?”

  Tom watched Vo’s face turn serious, so he leaned forward before these two could get going. Yasuko and Everett sat still and watched.

  “They also transmitted all of Hellenic Greece to the future, Denis,” Tom said. “Along with Roman law and architecture. What we know today came as a result.”

  “Yes, and how many decades of civil war and death accompanied the rise of the Roman Empire?” Denis said. “Or all the wars over who got to be Emperor later. And yes, I’m familiar with how Sulla broke the Republic a generation before Caesar tried it, let alone Octavian finally succeeding. Is that where we think we should go?”