The Red Admiral, page 30
From the corner of her eyes, Amala tracked the utter shock that came over everyone she could see, as she spoke to them in Mongolian. Maybe not so barbarian after all?
The Khan had a more guarded expression, but had there been a flicker in his eyes as well?
“So my credentials are similar to what one would have, had I been sent to an Imperial world as an ambassador, or any of the other planets and nations with which my nation deals,” she continued. “The Laws of Recognized Warfare exist for protection of diplomats, as well as warriors, since we could not be sure what reception I would receive. It is a request for dialogue, backed up by a promise of violence, if necessary.”
The room tensed. Thank the Creator she could actually speak this tongue, and not just repeat stock phrases, or do everything in Chinese and hope the terms and concepts translated cleanly.
The Khan studied her like a blue-eyed hawk for several minutes as she waited and tried not to think about snipers on a balcony above and behind her somewhere.
“Your accent is atrocious,” the Khan announced finally. A smile appeared. “We will need to work on that, Scholar Bhattacharya. Be welcome to Trusski.”
Amala remembered to breathe.
Chapter XLVIII
Date of the Republic July 13, 400 CP-406, FR-0093416-B System
Command Centurion Jennifer Glenn.
Independent raiding command.
She liked the way that sounded in her head. Hopefully, Keller and the First Lord had plans for her future that were greater than just turning into another Tomas Kigali.
Not that there was anything wrong with him and his career, but she wanted to command one of the Expeditionary Cruisers. Or another carrier like II Augusta. Fleet Centurion. Become a mover and a shaker in the navy.
Today, she had to make sure this mission went down professionally, and successfully. That involved sitting clear out at the edge of this nowhere system, like Keller had done at Trusski, and listening.
It was what the Corvette/Patrol was designed for. Go looking for trouble, but do it quietly, and be able to either meet it, or elude it, depending. A fast, cheap scout capable of going off and doing things by herself, while the rest of the team waited for Buran to come when the burglar alarm sounded.
But they had to get by her first.
“Steiner, what’s our status?” she prodded her science officer, drawing the woman up from the depths of whatever screen she had been focused on.
“No change local, sir,” Reese replied. “The only artificial targets I can find are the four orbital stations. Nothing else currently around.”
“Flight deck,” Glenn continued. “Are your birds ready to fly?”
“Affirmative,” Centurion Rouge said. “All boards green.”
Jennifer turned to her left.
“Navigator, accelerate to engagement speed and prepare for JumpSpace.”
Centurion Rasim looked up and made eye contact. Murdag was a tall, skinny blond who had been promoted into her new role as pilot of CP-406, just as Jennifer had moved up to command. But she handled herself well.
They both nodded.
Jennifer smiled and turned to Senior Centurion Elouan.
“Takouhi, you have Tactical,” Jennifer said. “Prepare to engage.”
Her Exec nodded and double-checked all her boards one last time.
“Pilot, make your jump,” Elouan ordered.
From this distance, the run down to the planet was quick. Everything had already been scouted in great detail, and they were coming in below the ecliptic, so there was nothing in the way that would distort their course. Just a hard fast in, across, up, and out.
CP-406 emerged into RealSpace with a surge of power. Takouhi had Tactical under control, so Jennifer focused her attention on the rest of the vessel.
Getting a feel for how her craft sailed into the wind, as it were.
“Flight deck, launch your birds,” Takouhi ordered as soon as everything was green.
Rouge was already prepared. All three kicked loose at the same time, seeds cast into the wind as their platform continued her acceleration. Black Prince was unarmed in his P-6, a point he occasionally bitched about, but he went right out with Boomerang and Grendel, flying escort for his mates with his jammers if needed.
“Gunner,” Takouhi continued. “Set your stern turret to maximum deflection. Go to rapid fire as you bear.”
“Roger that, sir,” the man called smartly from his station up front.
Yeoman Adnan Kristensen was never going to become an officer. Didn’t want the responsibility, but he had a deft touch with his guns. For him, shooting things was an art, and should be treated as such.
“Nav, up ten, roll three-four-zero, keep plane,” the Tactical Officer continued. “Kick your velocity up a shade and find me a line that brings us over the top firing when it’s time to retrieve the wing.”
“Executing now,” Rasim replied.
They hadn’t fought a battle before, but Jennifer had run the team through as many combat training sims as she could think up, including asking Bedrov for some assistance during one of the rendezvous layovers. It showed now, as the group coalesced into a single entity, rather than individuals.
Jennifer checked her boards anyway. Damage Control and Engineering fell under her control. She had to provide Takouhi a stable fighting platform for as long as possible, or know when to cut and run.
That was one of the reasons Tactical was always a separate task. You had to focus your entire being on the dance with your foe, with no time to pay attention to the larger tasks.
“Steiner, hail the station and the ground,” Jennifer ordered. “Find out who’s in charge and who might get hurt.”
That station had been unoccupied before. Not abandoned, but nobody lived there full time. From what Jennifer had seen, it was more of a place for engineers to live while making repairs, or for a passenger awaiting transport out of system.
Minutes passed as CP-406 got up a head of steam and her three chicks dropped into a lower orbit to line up bow shots.
“I have a man on the ground, Commander,” Steiner finally said. “Claims to be the facility manager, or something. Not sure how to translate the words and Chinese feels like his third or fourth language. Doesn’t even recognize English or Spanish.”
Jennifer clicked the button on her board to open the channel. It was one of the weird ones at the high end of the dial. Great for planetary coverage, where it could bounce off the ionosphere, but barely capable of reaching orbit.
“This is Command Centurion Jennifer Glenn, aboard the Imperial Fighting Vessel CP-406,” she said firmly in passable, if rusty Chinese. Technically it was still a RAN vessel, but they were operating under an Imperial flag for this mission. “If you have anyone aboard your orbital platform, have them evacuate immediately, as I will be destroying it in five minutes.”
“We do not deal with pirates,” came a sputtering voice.
Jennifer waited an extra beat, to see if he had anything more to say, but that was apparently it.
“No, sir,” she replied. “This is not a raid. This is an act of war, but we are attempting to minimize casualties in your system.”
She cut the signal and turned her attention to the rest of her team. Takouhi had a broad grin that the others matched.
“Tactical, prepare for war,” she continued.
Five minutes was pushing it. At this speed, they would be on top of the target and blowing by in six, but nobody expected to fire more than two or three shots.
Based on their previous investigation, the stations had nothing more proof against the elements than basic nav shields that would just barely deflect any orbital debris small enough to hole things. Big rocks would hit the station like a tin can in front of a car.
Engines behaving. JumpSails within parameters on all dimensions. Nobody else in orbit now, but Buran ships could still jump inside the gravity well with them if they were around. That was part of the reason to move so fast and to not just camp out in close proximity for target practice.
Jennifer watched a timer count down on her board. Five minutes was what she had given them, so Takouhi was holding to that, even if nothing moved on the station at all.
Fortunately, no guns were aboard to suddenly open fire, either. One of the benefits of having the complete technical readouts of the station at hand. But it might have been more fun to have the tug come with them on some run and see if it was possible to simply hook grapples to the station itself and drag it off. She would make a note to suggest it to Keller when they got back.
The galaxy’s biggest practical joke.
Zero.
“Open fire with Anna and Zebra,” Takouhi ordered.
The outer two turrets, foremost and aftmost. Boren and Chester up front had been replaced on a CP-model with the docking mechanisms for three fighters. Wiley and Yalu both held Type-1 Pulse beams, on the assumption that a patrol corvette was more likely running away from someone, and needed the firepower rearward, even if both could cover two hundred seventy degrees of arc, centered on the exact centerline rear.
An assault corvette like Kigali’s had Type-3-Tuned beams at A, B, Y, and Z, with the defensive Type-1-Pulse at C and W. Another reason CA-264 was such a dangerous beast, but not nearly as flexible as a patrol corvette.
Boomerang and Grendel cut loose at the same time, so four beams intersected on the station. Without shields, and with nothing aboard capable of making a really big explosion, like a generator stack, the platform simply went up in a flash of light as the beams liberated their energy on the outer skin. A moment later, a lumpy cloud appeared on the scanners as the pressurized water tanks went, engulfing all that bar steel in a cloud.
Jennifer wondered if there were any pieces of metal big enough to survive re-entry, but there was almost nothing on the planet below to hit. Just that one facility, as near as they had been able to tell, sitting on the edge of a vast, inland lake.
A truck stop in the middle of nowhere.
And now, a dead one.
“Station has been neutralized,” Centurion Stein confirmed, a moment later. And an understatement.
“Flight deck, recover your birds soonest,” Takouhi ordered. “Sensors, keep an eye out for any locals getting ready to join us. Guns, stay sharp and fire on anything coming out of jump.”
A chorus of assents. Jennifer smiled.
Her team.
Doing exactly what a patrol corvette was designed for. Get in, hit hard, get out. Wouldn’t work all that well out in Corynthe, where the pirate warships were all carriers, but if she brought along a mix of CEs and CPs, and maybe a CA, when they built a second one, Jennifer figured she could cut a nasty swath through those people as well.
She wondered how Keller and Bedrov were planning to overcome that. She knew the two of them well enough by now to know that they were both several moves ahead of everyone else. Someone, somewhere would be building up a corvette force to go after Keller, so she would go after them first.
Jennifer made a note to spend some time thinking about the chess moves involved. The balance of fleet forces necessary, and what to build over the next five years, as everyone suddenly updated their technology to the new standards as their old fleets were suddenly out-moded.
The Fleet Centurion was not one to rest on her laurels.
Chapter XLIX
Date of the Republic September 21, 400 Forward Base Delta
Jessica considered the view through the wall-to-ceiling port. Darkness as far as the eye could see, punctured in only a few places where the clouds of cold gas grew thin enough for the passage of starlight.
If there were lines in galactic warfare, she and her team were deep behind them, nearly a tenth of the way across that dark gulf separating Trusski from Ninagirsu. Hopefully, nobody would think to look here for an Imperial operating base. Even a mobile one like this.
She considered her companion, standing close enough that she could feel his warmth in the dim light, but not touching her. Always the perfect gentleman, even in those times when she might have preferred him to be less of one.
“You are an impossibly stubborn man, Torsten Wald,” she offered in a quiet voice.
They had the observation deck to themselves, apparently by arrangements he had made with Arott’s crew, and following a quiet meal in a suspiciously-deserted wardroom.
“You are not the first person to make that observation, madam,” he replied with a grin. “Anybody else would most likely have surrendered by now.”
“And yet I get the feeling you would wait forever,” she replied, turning to face him now, the breadth of the darkness forgotten behind her.
“Maybe not forever, Jessica,” he said, voice dropping down to a low murmur.
They were alone on the deck, yes, but both Marcelle and Willow were never far away. It was one of the costs of being Jessica Keller, that she could never just escape from everything for more than a few hours. At some point, some decisions would need to be made, if not by her immediately, then at least approved by her before they could be put into practice.
“How long?” she asked. “There are likely many years on this frontier before I plan to retire.”
“Who said anything about retiring, Fleet Centurion?” he replied. “I continue to serve, even as I have little to do out here besides be on your staff and provide a liaison back to Admiral Wachturm. A position which colors everything you do with an official imprimatur.”
“Have you ever considered going back into line command?” Jessica hesitated to ask, but this felt like an evening when some levels of barriers were coming down, at least around her.
Six years was long enough to mourn, wasn’t it?
“I have,” he said. “But my skills these days are much better suited to number-crunching. It’s what got me onto the Imperial Staff. Karl is very much driven by a solid understanding of economics. And it got me an invitation to a very elite party on St. Legier.”
“So you went for the express purpose of meeting me?” Jessica asked, focusing on his face.
“I wanted to see the person behind the numbers,” Torsten told her in a simple admission. “I saw what you did with The Long Raid. Watched the psychological trauma impact and blight an entire Imperial sector, despite everything the Grand Admiral did to try to stop you.”
“Not many people would have been brave enough to actually walk up and talk to me that night,” Jessica teased. “I know, because I was playing my own little game with them, watching them maneuver around my party, trying not to be infected with whatever it was that I carried. And then you stepped across that chasm.”
“You have no idea how intimidating you are in person, Jessica,” Torsten said. “Especially not when what one knows about you are only the stories of the barbarian queen who has suddenly struck deep into the heart of the Empire.”
“Thuringwell was never that important,” Jessica retorted.
“No, it wasn’t,” he said. “And yet look at what happened. The panic you induced was so great that Karl prevailed over the hotheads to offer the first true peace treaty in a generation that wasn’t just a period of armed calm before the next sneak attack somewhere.”
“You were winning the war,” Jessica said. “I won’t say a desperate measure was necessary, but a grand one certainly was.”
“We would have won in another twenty-five to forty years, Fleet Centurion,” Torsten said. “I’m an econometricist. I’ve done the studies. In another ten to fifteen, Aquitaine would have lost so much ground on so many fronts that it might have imploded of its own weight. But then you came along. 2218 Svati Prime.”
“What did you see?” Jessica leaned forward. They were not touching, quite, but he was breathing on her now, and she him.
“The Empire convulsed,” Torsten said, his green eyes losing focus as his head tilted back and he looked inward.
She liked the smell of the aftershave he was wearing tonight. And she could taste the fresh apple pie from dessert on his breath.
“Confidence in the fleet faltered,” Torsten continued. “Even the reputation of the Red Admiral wavered. Gross Imperial Product dropped four-tenths of a percent in the year after your attack, controlling for all other factors. And I did that in my research.”
He paused to look down, focusing on her again.
“And then the Battles of Petron and Ballard,” he continued. “The shocks: political, psychological, and economic, were all devastating. Fleet Command had to rotate a number of squadrons in from outer frontiers suddenly, the better to protect worlds that had previously been considered safe. Nobody knew where you would strike next.”
“Thuringwell,” she whispered with carefully-suppressed glee.
Torsten was an econometricist. There were not many people in the galaxy that would have been able to understand her logic, the devastation, the impact of losing an Imperial world to Aquitaine, especially one that hadn’t previously been a Republic world.
“Thuringwell,” he agreed. “I had to meet you in the flesh. See what it was that all the commanders, all the spies had missed. So I finagled my way into that reception by trading favors with someone I knew in the palace, screwed up my courage, and walked up to meet you.”
“And did you find it?” Jessica asked. “That thing you sought?”
“No,” he said. “Nobody would have. You run too deep for anyone to see what goes on inside that head.”
“Oh?”
“But I watched you move when Dittmar rolled his dice,” Torsten said, remaining perfectly still as he realized how close she had gotten. Any other time, he might have withdrawn, even just a centimeter, when her hand came to rest on his forearm, as it suddenly had. “You had no immediate plan of action, but it took you all of about five minutes to spin up an entire campaign and put it into action.”
