The Red Admiral, page 20
His was not the power to effect those changes, but Torsten realized he was seated across from someone who could, discussing a woman who also had that power.
He blinked as whole new patterns fell into place like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
“Assuming the Peace, how far will you draw her into Imperial politics, Admiral?” Torsten asked.
Wachturm’s squint hardened, for a moment, replaced a moment later by a slight grin.
He knows what I can do. It’s part of why he sent me. Not spy. Oracle.
Torsten felt the ice give way completely, and found he was floating in the air rather than drowning in the icy waters below.
“Joh knows that we cannot continue business as usual,” the Grand Admiral replied. “Casey and Jessica will hopefully provide an alternate path, deflecting some of the energy away from revolution.”
“Joh?” Torsten asked carefully.
“His Sovereign Imperial Majesty, Karl Johannes Arend Wiegand, Hereditary King of St. Legier, Emperor of Fribourg, Captain,” the man replied. “Karl VII.”
Oh. Working at the very peak of the pyramid.
“Does she know?” Torsten asked. There were two women in that conversation, but only one that really mattered.
“Jessica is an exceptional woman, Wald,” the admiral said. “I am sure she could figure it all out in a few moments with sufficient…motivation. I’ll go further: I’m confident that she already has, to some extent. I wanted to know if you were prepared to go down that road. It is not something we would order.”
“What should I know about her, Admiral?” Torsten asked, trusting his intuition to leap into darkness.
“I watched the sparks between the two of you, the night you met,” Wachturm replied. “And I knew Daneel Ishikura at close range for nearly a year. He eventually achieved the calm that you have had since the accident. And, to some extent, even before, according to the records and the people I have interviewed. Solemnity and solidity. You remind me of Arlo in that, although Arlo is only now learning to get past his own doubts. I took a chance on including you with Casey’s mission, because I believed that it was the right thing. I have seen nothing since I arrived to change my mind.”
“zu Kermode personally threatened me last week,” Torsten said with a sudden smile. “So I believe the others involved understand, and accept me.”
“Did she now?” the Grand Admiral’s voice rose in tone and weight. “Good.”
Torsten waited as the Grand Admiral studied him for several moments, possibly with new eyes.
“Understand two things, Wald,” he continued. “One, I have seen Jessica at her best, and her worst, and I consider her a friend. I want her to be happy as a person, as well as an ally.”
Something sour must have shown in Torsten’s eyes. The Grand Admiral’s squint was back, harder this time.
“What?” he demanded in a simple tone.
Torsten let the words seek themselves, rather than push. They might be the culmination of the day, and his career. Possibly his life.
Floating in air, instead of drowning.
“What if the Peace does not hold, sir?” Torsten finally asked. “What if the war returns?”
The angry bear across the desk relaxed, even smiled.
“I did not say this aloud, Wald,” Wachturm commented dryly. “However, I would expect that you would do something crazy like immediately resign your commission and possibly steal a courier, if you found yourself on the wrong side of the border at that moment. The Empire can survive with one fewer economist on staff.”
Good. He understands the stakes.
Torsten nodded. Everyone else had come to realize how serious he was.
Now he only needed to convince her.
Chapter XXXII
Imperial Founding: 178/03/07. IFV Feuerfalke, Intersection Point Kasum
Because someone had suggested it, Gunter Tifft had made inquiries of the line marine that followed him around like a hungry, stray dog spying food. Or a cat stalking a wounded rabbit.
He had never met Lady Moirrey Kermode in the flesh, only heard the wild speculations about the woman. Was she really a ninja-super-agent?
The big space of Firehawk’s engineering lab had seemed to swallow her up when she joined him. Two of the ship’s engineers were handy to answer questions, but had been instructed to remain silent and observe, until addressed. Apparently, they lived in awe or fear of the woman.
In person, she was tiny. A meter and a half tall. Less than fifty kilograms. Raven-black hair. Slender.
It was the eyes that gave away who she was. Somewhere between hazel and blue, depending on the light. Looking through him right now like she had x-rays for vision.
More legend.
“Thank you for joining me, Lady Moirrey,” Gunter said carefully to a woman who had helped defeat an Empire. “The Grand Admiral appreciates your assistance in this matter.”
This was a thing, resting between them on an engineering table. A squat, metal box not quite a meter on a side. Not quite a cube, but close enough to count. A container in brittle, black metal.
The treasure on the asteroid, once the assault team had secured it and brought it back for the engineers on Firehawk to be stumped by, once they started inspecting it.
“So what’s ya gots and hows kin I halp?” the woman chirped at him.
Gunter had to replay the phrase in his head to translate it, once he realized she was still speaking English to him. It had sounded almost Chinese in intonation.
“When we arrived, Firehawk picked up a transmission signal,” Gunter replied. “Intermittent to us, but that was a result of it resting on an asteroid that was tumbling, relative to our location. We captured it, disabled it, and retrieved it. Everyone on this crew has been unable to identify it. Firehawk has engineers, but not scientists. The best they might be able to do is dismantle it, so the Grand Admiral suggested I ask you first.”
Somehow, Gunter wasn’t surprised that this woman reached into a pocket on her thigh and pulled out a…call it a tool, whatever the hell it was.
“Ooh,” she grinned. “Best kinds o’secrets. No’ armed?”
Armed?
Ah. Dangerous. A bomb, perhaps? The first thing the assault team had verified, before they brought aboard their shuttle.
“No, sir,” Gunter said. “Ma’am. Power supply. Transmitter. And something one of our engineers called a black box, whatever that means.”
“Rights,” she leaned forward and just touched the casing with her bare hand. “And you ha’no opened her to peeks?”
Pause. Translate.
“No, Lady Moirrey,” Gunter finally comprehended her words. “We scanned it, but the metal was…radiation-welded? Was that the right term?”
“Close-nuff,” she grinned up at him. “Solar wind, long-nuff. Charge builds up, moves molecules. Takes forever, though. Makes this old.”
“How old?” he asked, suddenly concerned.
In response, the woman engineer rapped the casing with a knuckle, and then tapped it with the tool in her right hand. It made an oddly-hollow thunk unlike anything Gunter could remember ever hearing.
She shrugged and continued to touch the device, leaning this way and that.
At one point, he thought she might actually climb atop the table, until she found a switch that lowered the surface nearly to the deck.
Something caught her eye as he watched, utterly lost. Gunter glanced at the other two men, but they weren’t any better. One actually shrugged silently.
“’Ere we goes,” she said, standing with her toes on the tabletop and hunched over the top of the box. She paused and looked around before pointing at the closer of the two engineers.
“You,” she ordered, suddenly sharp with her vocabulary. “Get me a cotton rag, a liter of pure water, and a towel. Now.”
The man jumped and ran. Lady Moirrey leaned over and looked at the device from very close.
She might have sniffed it. Maybe he just imagined that.
The go-fer engineer returned with the requested items, placing them next to her, but not returning to his previous spot by the wall.
Gunter watched her wet the cotton rag with some of the water, and then rub it softly across the top of the device. Satisfied, she repeated it, using about half of the water.
Gunk accumulated on the rag as she worked. At one point, Lady Moirrey even looked up at him and winked.
Gunter kept his silence. And his distance.
Eventually, she took the towel and wiped everything down, tossing it over her shoulder for anyone in range to catch. Gunter could see a design of some sort, perhaps a logo, along with writing etched into the metal.
“Huh,” she announced, standing.
Not that it made that much difference in how she appeared, being shoulder-high on him, even if she was on her toes.
“Needs ta cracks it op’n,” she continued. “But yu gots an antique here. Ain’t see’d the likes, but heard tales.”
“Please pardon my ignorance, Lady Kermode,” Gunter said carefully. “What is it?”
“Asteroid mining beacon,” she replied, tapping it. “Tags a claim, broadcasts a signal fer anyone close by. Lets you navigate by it. Establishes legal ownership, but I doubt the rightful heir’s like to come back and argue fer his claim these days. Even if’n you’s now technically a claim-jumper.”
“Why not?” Gunter asked carefully.
In response, she reached down and touched some of the writing he had seen.
“This beacon was placed on October 20, 1153 Union of Man,” she said.
Gunter tried to do the math in his head, but history had never been his strong suit.
“When was that?” he asked, feeling mortified to show such weakness in front of a woman.
“Five thousand, three hundred, and twenty-nine years ago, Lieutenant Commander Tifft,” Lady Moirrey got formal, all of a sudden. “Twenty-two centuries before Earth was destroyed in the Concordancy War. I would suggest you deliver it to the Imperial Institute of Mines when you’re done with it. You can’t build something this durable today, but they should be able to mimic it. Otherwise, I might take it upon myself to completely dismantle the device and catalog it.”
Gunter paused, and then decided to test his luck. He straightened, almost to attention.
“Lady Moirrey Kermode,” he intoned formally. “I have been instructed by the Grand Admiral himself to solve this mystery. As a Ritter of the Imperial Household, you would be doing a service for the entire Empire if you were to perform a careful, scientific study of this machine.”
Her face got concerned, like she thought he was playing some joke on her, but it cleared up quickly.
“Dinna have time,” she replied. “Take months ’n’yer leavin’ in days.”
True, they were scheduled to return to St. Legier in short order.
But his orders had been both extremely specific, and crafted with the necessary latitude.
“I can have it delivered to you aboard Auberon forthwith,” he added.
From the way her face changed, Gunter was concerned for a moment that the woman was about to kiss him. He relaxed to a nice parade rest, which had the benefit of moving him back half a step.
Just in case she was about to attack him.
“Dones,” she chirped. “Will lets ya knows. Is good?”
“It is,” Gunter said. “Thank you.”
And like a storm, she was gone.
Gunter turned to the closest engineer and tapped the clean spot.
“I want full reproductions of that, including silicon casts if you can,” he ordered the man. “Then deliver it to zu Kermode with all attendant courtesies. If you are nice, she might include your names in the seminal, scientific paper she’s likely to write on this device.”
Gunter stepped out of their way as their own storm erupted.
Fifty-three centuries, just floating in the dark, announcing itself to the galaxy.
What had that beacon seen?
Chapter XXXIII
Date of the Republic March 9, 400 SC Auberon, Intersection Point Kasum
Jessica grinned in response to Wachturm’s scowl. An angry bear of a Grand Admiral, roused mid-winter, being poked with a long stick. It was just the two of them in her private office, with Marcelle’s best coffee and a locked hatch. She could do that here. Poke him safely.
“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?” Em asked with an ursine growl.
Jessica sipped the perfect, steaming bitterness and let it flow down into her toes.
“Frankly, no,” she replied. “We have one of those circumstances for which the Ancients had a proverb: A secret known to three people is only successful if two of them are dead.”
“Plus, you don’t know, yourself. Am I right?” Em pressed.
“I have four good targets from the list you provided, Em,” Jessica allowed. “I won’t know which one will work better until I see them. That will take time, scouting with Ballard and CP-406 as quietly as I can.”
“You dropped on Thuringwell like a hawk,” Em noted.
“After I had spent the better part of two years writing a Class II Thesis on the weakest link in your entire frontier, and how to apply Wakely Okafor’s theories to practice,” Jessica retorted. “I was only betting my career on that one. I’ll be betting my life, and the lives of a large portion of Humanity, here.”
“Why?” he suddenly changed from grouchy to querulous. “What drives you to do this, Jessica? It can’t just be Casey. You were like this before you ever knew the girl. And you and I were foes for a very long time.”
She studied the man. Looked hard into eyes that she had seen in nightmares. The dreaded Red Admiral, himself.
Implacable, but always an honorable enemy. Not yet a friend, perhaps, but getting there, she supposed. Jessica had never known friends, as other people understood the term. Marcelle had been with her for nearly twenty years. Robbie, and then Denis, Tomas, and Alber’, but nobody she could open herself up to.
With one, notable exception. Pint-sized. Moirrey.
Well, two, actually, when she considered it. Warlock had truly been her first love, for as long as she had had him. Torsten had potential, but she wasn’t sure she was willing to go down that road again. If ever.
But that wasn’t what Em was asking.
Jessica let her mind drift back to Ballard. Not that famous battle, facing this man, but the aftermath, after the ugly, pyrrhic victory on her part.
Dinner. Planetside in a place that embodied the definition of a dive bar, clear out on the edge of civilization, where two women had hiked for the better part of two days to find a comm capable of reaching orbit and calling for help.
Burgers and beer, even though only three of the four could actually process it as food. After all, she, Marcelle, and Moirrey were human. The fourth person that night hadn’t been. Not that anyone would know, or could ever know.
Summer had designed and built herself an android body good enough to fool almost any inspection, powered by a small atomic reactor capable of keeping her on-line for centuries.
Allowing Summer to go free that night, to disappear from human history, as the woman had intended, was quite literally the highest crime Jessica could commit, under Imperial or Republic law.
And yet, was nevertheless the right thing to do.
Jessica took a breath and released it. Em watched her like a rabbit spying a hawk.
“At Ballard, you went to kill the Sentience known as Suvi,” Jessica began.
Em nodded slowly, fully aware of that grand, mad quest, and all it had cost the two of them.
“She and I had several long conversations,” Jessica continued, conveniently leaving out how some of those talks occurred after the battle. “Suvi had almost as low an opinion of the rest of her kind as you do. She had been taught how to be human, while the rest of her kind commonly thought of themselves as gods. She believed that it was one of our great failings as a species, and as a culture, not to make the Sentiences more like us from the beginning. I’ve read the intel, the anthropology sections, on what Buran is like as a place. Humans may be obnoxious, short-sighted, and stupid, but we’re free. The Everlasting, as he likes to call himself, thinks he has the right to control us and our destiny. To make us bend to his will.”
“According to some, it is a paradise, a garden of Eden,” he hazarded.
She could tell he was probing. Emmerich Wachturm would happily burn Winterhome to the ground from orbit, if given half a chance.
“The children are raised in crèches, Em,” Jessica said. “Assigned to a work unit as soon as they are weaned, then taught to belong to that group their whole lives. Buran assigns them a place in his culture and sticks them into that slot. If he decides you are to be a warrior, so be it. Or a scholar. Or a poet. You are not allowed to choose your fate.”
“And did you, Jessica?” Em asked, slicing off on a tangent. “Get the chance? You were identified early and thrust into the pipeline to become a warrior. Shaped and honed your whole life to this one thing. I was the same way, raised to a place and a station. There was never a doubt that I would go into the fleet and become a high-ranking officer.”
“I demanded to be here, every step of the way, Em,” Jessica fired a hard shot across his bow. “And you were born to privilege, to noblesse oblige. Put yourself in Casey’s shoes and tell me about choosing the life you want. I doubt you have ever really talked to the woman, only to the child she used to be.”
He fell silent, but she could see the angry words on the tip of his tongue. She could also see the realization hit him, almost like a physical blow. Em had only known Kasimira, the precocious child, and Casey, the rebellious teenager.
The Red Admiral hadn’t seen the young woman forced to become an Emperor. Hadn’t seen the costs suddenly weigh on her soul and her future, the shackles of duty, almost as bad as Casey expected matrimony to be, when that dreaded time came.
The terrible moment passed. Jessica watched his eyes grow rueful.
