The Red Admiral, page 14
Nils watched that smile grow to encompass the whole room.
“Ladies and gentlemen, one last hearty meal for the condemned,” she said. “In the morning, we ride.”
Chapter XXII
Date of the Republic January 24, 400 SC Auberon, Departing Kismayo System
Jessica let the warm hum of human energy surround her as she took her place at the great circular table commanding her flag bridge.
This was her home.
It was only partly a running joke between her and Arott Whughy that he had personally taken her chair from this table and put it into storage while he commanded the squadron at Petron. He actually had, but that had been a statement to her people that he wasn’t trying to usurp her place. And that had secured his with them during that long mission, guiding Petron a few more crucial steps into a more civilized place, reminding her team that they were more than just warriors.
She sat and nodded to her newest staff member. Enej used to sit directly across from her, but he had moved sixty degrees to her right, letting himself and Centurion zu Wiegand see each other as well as watch her. Denis was her right hand, commanding Auberon, even as Enej was her left, the chief of staff and Flag Centurion that could translate her words and thoughts into concrete-enough orders that her team knew where they needed to be next as the music played.
First Fleet Lord Loncar had always placed maximum emphasis on the exact placement of his task forces, even delaying an attack until every destroyer was in the proper plane and alignment.
Fool.
Jessica just had to dance, with the enemy, much as she would an unpredictable fighting robot. Robbie and Alber’ could seamlessly switch between sword and shield, saber and main-gauche, on the fly. Tamara as well. They all knew Enej and had worked with him for years.
Fingers in a glove.
The third point of the triangle would be more interesting, but Jessica had no doubts that Casey was up to the task. Her training did not include the sort of rigor that a four-year Academy training course would include, but then, she was never going to pilot a starship and need to calculate orbital paths and gravitational deflections.
Probably.
Instead, Jessica had created the role of Imperial Flag Centurion. Just as Enej handled squadron communications, Casey would talk to Imperial Captains, if any happened to be part of her task group once they arrived. And while they might complain about taking orders from an Aquitaine vessel or a woman, nobody was going to argue with Admiral of the Red Keller, especially not when the order came from the mouth of a woman who could legally introduce herself to them as Emperor Karl VIII.
Jessica looked around the rest of the room, spotting familiar faces and newcomers. Unlike the warriors, her flag staff tended to be more fluid, as Nils and Petia worked to seed other squadrons and fleets with veterans of First Expeditionary’s flag bridge, as a way of quietly transforming the entire Navy.
Jessica counted noses on the various displays projected around her like ghosts. Everyone was here, ready.
Primed.
Even Kigali had gotten into the act, swapping places with CS-404, the scout who normally rode in the van, instead of CA-264’s accustomed place at the rear, just so he could lead. As the Command Centurion with the longest time in grade, to go with perhaps the biggest legend other than her own, he could do that.
“Casey,” Jessica said all of a sudden. “You do it. That’s the most appropriate, I think.”
From three meters away, it was hard to tell if the young woman blushed, but she did smile carefully and nod, reaching down to press a virtual button on the console in front of her.
“First Expeditionary Fleet, this is Casey zu Wiegand, aboard Auberon. I have the Flag,” she said in a firm voice, no doubt aware that those words would be recorded for posterity. “CA-264, come to zero-three-zero, up ten, roll three-five-zero and accelerate to flank speed.”
Kigali’s ghost nodded at all of them and looked down.
“Zero-three-zero, up ten, roll left ten, roger,” he called back, far more formal than was normal with that man. He understood the new legends that would be born today.
“All vessels,” Casey continued. “Conform to CA-264 and prepare to transition to JumpSpace on my order.”
Jessica found it amusing that Casey’s first glance was to Enej, to make sure she had said it all correctly and in the right order, smiling at Jessica only after the Flag Centurion nodded.
Next stop, Fribourg and the Grand Admiral.
Chapter XXIII
Date of the Republic February 19, 400 Transition Waypoint 9
“Are you happy to be able to finally go home, Uller?” Jouster asked with a tease.
The two men were flying point on a mass formation. All twenty-seven birds from Auberon, all eighteen from II Augusta. Three from CP-406. Hell, even the three ready-fighters from Andorra. Plus the two Gunships and four DropShips from Auberon, led by a brand-new, bright-red Cayenne. And the ScoutShip Whisper from II Augusta.
Everybody who could fly.
It was an impressive wall of craft, even if he had traded in his beloved M-6 Gungnir for the radical new design of the E-2 Scorpion, an improved upgrade of Eel’s Petron craft that that pirate Bedrov had dreamed up.
But Jouster was finally happy. It had taken him this long just to figure out how to tweak and override all the damned controls and safety features the pirate had added so that his craft finally flew the way he wanted: right out on the edge of insane. The edge he needed in combat.
Jouster supposed he could have gone for one of the C-1 Templars. It was, after all, much more of a melee fighter than the strike fighter E-2, but he had seen the tapes from St. Legier.
Buran fought like pirates, those folks he and his team had just spent the last year teaching manners. Bounce out of nowhere and clamp on like a shark. And while a Type-1-Pulse might be fun against other fighters, nobody had ever seen anything like Starfighters on that frontier. So he was much happier sitting behind a big gun. Or beside one, as it were.
The horseshoe layout still threw him off. The Type-3 should be in front of him, so it was between his legs when it fired. Not that he would ever say that out loud.
At thirty-seven, Command Flight Centurion Milos Pavlovic, Jouster, was too old to be flying combat missions, but he refused to admit it. And only the Fleet Centurion was going to be able to pry him out of that cockpit. That she hadn’t yet done do said volumes about what she thought was coming.
“What is home?” Uller asked, after a pause to collect his thoughts. “I have lived on Ladaux for thirty years.”
Forty-year-old Senior Flight Centurion Friedhelm Hannes Förstner, Uller, was almost as good a pilot as Jouster and they both knew it. And nowhere near as crazy. And just the man to break in all the new pilots that the expanded wing got as kids came and went.
Jouster was in command of the squadron, but he still stayed in the cockpit, even though a Command Flight Centurion was supposed to be a desk billet. Strike Squadron One was his, just as Uller commanded Two and da Vinci was in charge of Escort Three.
First Lord had kept the senior people together as much as possible with retirements, school, and casualties, while running younger pilots in for a year of what Jouster liked to call Advanced Combat Flying.
The crazy shit.
And Uller had nowhere to retire to, either. Or hadn’t. The Förstner family had been officially proscribed nearly three decades ago, finding asylum in Aquitaine one step ahead of the headsman’s axe. Chartists in the age of Empire.
Besides, Uller liked to fly. He was a big man, right exactly at the top end of height and weight allowable in the cockpit, limited by safety systems and ejection seats. A blond bear of an old-school Viking with a petite wife back home on Ladaux and a passel of kids getting ready to be grown-ups soon.
“You don’t miss St. Legier?” Jouster called across the vacuum between then
“Lady Casey gives me hope,” Uller said. “The pardon arranged by Fleet Centurion Keller was wonderful news to my parents and siblings, but it can be just as easily undone later. I will be the first in my family to return, and even then it will only be to pass through to a far frontier.”
“You don’t think it will work?” Jouster asked.
“Imperial Security executed my grandfather for his political views,” Uller replied in a tired voice. “Paper is only paper.”
“What’s he so bitchy about, now?” da Vinci suddenly added her voice to the conversation on the private, command channel.
“He doesn’t trust people,” Jouster said.
“Well, duh,” da Vinci’s voice smirked. “His second kid was born before you even knew he was married, you remember.”
“It is hard, lowering my guards, even today,” Uller managed to impart a shrug to his tones. “It will be harder to go back and look at those places that my family knew, even if I have so few useful memories of the homeland.”
“Do you miss it?” she asked.
“It is not my home,” the blond pilot said. “Ladaux is home. Where we are going is just a place.”
Jouster was about to make a sarcastic reply when a single, loud tone overrode him. And every other pilot on every comm channel.
“Flight Force, this is Auberon,” a woman’s voice intruded.
It took him a second to identify the Princess. She was new, but good at this. Keller had warned him in no uncertain terms not to make a pass at the girl, or the Fleet Centurion would simply ground him and drop him on an Imperial planet for the duration.
It was the only threat that really had teeth. He had minded his P’s and Q’s, so he had not spent that much time around her, unlike Uller, Bitter Kitten, and da Vinci.
“Jouster. Go ahead,” he called back.
“Four asteroids designated by the flag,” the woman said in a calm, almost bored voice as little stars appeared on his nav console. “All craft initiate a multi-vector strafing run at high speed. Points will be awarded for accuracy, damage, and bonus for destruction. You have the wing.”
“Roger that, Auberon. Jouster has the wing,” he said, reaching down and starting to dial some of his controls past their safety points, lockouts having already been disabled. He confirmed the path he wanted and transmitted it to the mob of killers behind him. “All ships, you heard the lady. Guns only. Form on me and let's bring the thunder."
Jouster had already slammed the throttle to the stops. There wasn’t much extra available, since Bedrov had put the biggest engines possible behind him and added a generator for the gun and onboard systems, but he could still eke out an extra two percent over anybody else by judiciously overriding in places. Maybe he could get three percent on the closest fighter, as big as Uller was physically. Mass still figured into the equation.
On his console, a small gap opened. Not much, just enough that everyone else would notice and try to catch him. Nobody was ever going to.
Target One was a small asteroid, as they went. Maybe a kilometer on the long axis and half that wide, shaped vaguely like a barbell. Furious had invented the technique, once upon a time. First Expeditionary had refined it in the years since.
Jouster dialed the engines back to idle, unlocked his gyros, and snapped the nose of his craft down and sideways, until he was flying forward, upside down relative to his previous flight orientation, while facing left nearly forty degrees. He shifted his hand from the throttle to the gyro control and fired the first shot, knowing the parallax of three meters was going to knock him off center just enough. Better to fly these missions now and learn that, rather than find out in combat.
Dead center hit. At high speed. Flying sideways.
Just like the book said to do.
He shifted on the gyros, twisting on his nose and side like an eel as he triggered a second shot. On his console, the little trailing stars started to blink as Uller got off his first shot into the same rock.
That annoying voice in his ear as he triggered the third shot, as fast as the guns could cycle.
“Warning. Hazardous thermal load detected,” she said, a recording that followed him everywhere like a nagging wife.
It took time to bleed off heat when a Type-3 cycled. Even a system as well-built as this one wasn’t instant. And you weren’t supposed to fire three that quickly. The little temperature gauges on the console certainly weren’t happy.
Still, that was what combat was all about.
Jouster took his finger off the trigger before he fired a fourth. Rode the gyros up and over like a man off a ten-meter diving board, until he was aligned with the second rock. Slammed the throttle to the stops and let the sudden power press him deep enough into his seat that his suit inflated a little.
This was flying. This was living.
Second rock, coming up.
He checked the various readouts as the rest of the team finally got into place to take their run at the first rock, zeroing himself down on the second rock and triggering his first shot.
Uller hadn’t even completed his first re-alignment to chase.
First shot was high and wide. Over-compensating for drift when his unconscious brain saw the arrowhead shape as an enemy warship moving right to left.
Jouster forced the nose of his craft down and around with gyros and the slightest blip on the engines.
Master-piloting-class, children.
The second shot was on the beam, carving off a chunk of what was probably nickel from the way it showed up on his scanners.
“Warning. Thermal load critical.”
She was back. She was annoying. She was why he was still single.
But she was probably right.
Just because he was tired of listening to her, Jouster reached under the console and found the fuse interrupt that would cut the voice off.
Still, Jouster withheld the third shot with a muttered curse and rolled like a space-borne gator instead, buying time for the coolant systems to catch up as he found target number three and opened the engines to maximum thrust and narrowest nozzle settings.
Catch me if you can.
On his boards, something was off.
Wrong.
Readings were going the same way.
“Not good,” he muttered, mostly under his breath.
“Whole sentences, please, Jouster?” da Vinci called back over the comm.
Apparently, he was talking louder than he thought.
“Problems over here,” he said, off-hand, still pressed flat by the acceleration.
“Declare an emergency?” Uller’s voice joined Ainsley’s in mothering him.
“No,” he growled. “I got this. Just a problem with the coolant system. Gimme a sec.”
On his board, something suddenly went red.
And then everything went white.
* * *
“All vessels, we have an emergency,” Casey called to the room, trusting than the flag bridge comm was open and the signals routing software would pick it up.
It had been a routine training exercise, so Jessica and Enej were off-duty. Available, but not in the room with her.
That wouldn’t last much longer as alarms began to scream everywhere.
She took a moment to draw a breath deep into her lungs and close her eyes.
The page she needed in her memory took a second to find, because it wasn’t one she had ever expected to need.
But that was why you studied those regulations. Committed them to memory.
Anything could happen.
Like now.
“Uller, take charge of the wing and get everyone clear,” Casey ordered. She had the flag until someone with more seniority overrode her. And she knew the situation. “Whisper and da Vinci, stay on site and take charge of rescue operations. All vessels, immediately launch search and rescue teams.”
“Flag, this is Cayenne,” a new voice came on the line.
Hollis Dyson. Gaucho.
Hands down the craziest person she had ever met, including The Queen’s Own pilots, flying off Kali-ma.
“Go, Gaucho,” Casey replied tersely, juggling metaphorical knives as she waited for Enej or Jessica.
“My bay crew is fully EVA certified,” the man said in a laconic voice, right on the edge of insubordination. He must really be that good of a pilot. “And I have a medic on board.”
One of the signals Yeoman waved a hand to get Casey’s attention, obviously noting the confusion on her face.
Casey reached down and muted the pickup.
“He does,” the man said with a simple nod. “Technically a veterinarian, but still…”
Why did a DropShip have a vet?
Right. Gaucho. Thuringwell.
She keyed the line back open, smiling a thank you at the man across the room.
“Roger that, Gaucho,” Casey said. “You are go for rescue. All vessels, there will be EVA suits in the air shortly. Navigate accordingly.”
“Situation?” Jessica called, coming through the door.
Enej must have been fully asleep. Or maybe at lunch. His was the only closer cabin, in terms of actual steps required.
“We just lost a fighter during the training exercise,” Casey replied, watching the woman simply command the entire room and all the emotions in it into their place with nothing more than a look.
Amazing.
“Collision?” Jessica asked.
“Negative, Fleet Centurion,” Casey shook her head. “Spaceframe failed catastrophically for no apparent cause. All other craft accounted for. Rescue operations underway.”
“Who was it?”
Jessica was at her seat now and buckling herself in.
“Jouster.”
Casey hadn’t know Milos Pavlovic all that well. His reputation as a lothario had preceded him, and she hadn’t wanted to start an incident by beating the man silly if he got as friendly as some rumors suggested he might.
