The Red Admiral, page 37
“No,” Casey said simply. “Most of them are afraid of me. Or, more specifically, Willow, Marcelle, and Lady Moirrey. Plus probably Jež, Aeliaes, d’Maine, and Kigali. And you.”
“Likely,” Jessica said. “Nobody wants to become an international embarrassment. But we can whisper things, perhaps get things moving, if you have suggestions.”
“No,” Casey decided. “I might have to sneak off with Willow and some of her friends at some point, in disguise, for a crazy girls’ weekend, I haven’t yet met anyone that would stand up to even my scrutiny, let alone Father and Uncle Em.”
“Understood,” Jessica said. “How about now? You ready for Trusski?”
“Yes,” Casey said. “Knowing that I have Captain Wald and Enej close, and his whole team backing me up, helps my confidence. I am the Empire, in their eyes. I need to impress them.”
“Princess Kasimira. Lady Casey zu Wiegand, you already have,” Jessica pronounced. “We just have to survive bloodying Buran’s nose out here, and you will be an even bigger hero, on both sides of the border.”
Chapter LVIX
Date of the Republic Nov 11, 400 SC Auberon, Forward Base Delta
“You rang?” Yan asked as he wound his way through the last bits of the maze that was the ass-end of the engineering labs.
Moirrey was sitting on a stool like a long-term patron at her favorite bar, just waiting for the bartender to make it back to her. Yan had gotten used to eccentricities. Not counting Digger and his people, Yan figured he could read her better than anyone, except maybe Jessica.
She wasn’t off, per se, but this was a much-more-serious Moirrey than the world probably even knew existed. The look in her eyes when she turned to face him was something he might have expected in a ten-thousand-year-old mummy rising up from a crypt in a nightmare, coming for his soul.
“The information I am about to show you is not located in Auberon’s main memory core,” she said simply, reaching out one hand and pivoting the screen she had been studying, far enough around for him to see the complicated schematics.
Yan sucked in deep breath quietly, hearing her speak like this. Normally, Moirrey’s accent was so thick he felt like he had to parse it with an encyclopedia. When she got serious, when she got deadly, she suddenly sounded like a newscaster selected for eloquence.
Gonna be one of those days.
“I might not put it there. Ever,” Moirrey continued in a hard, level tone. “Or I might. There isn’t anyone else in the squadron who could even understand the technical implications, and my sister is one of the few who would understand the political ramifications.”
Yan knew which she Moirrey was referring to. He had gotten drunk enough with her and Marcelle over the last few years to have been admitted to that particular girls’ club.
Rather than answer, Yan walked close and began cycling the image. Pull back. Zoom in. Pivot. Spin. Snap up the power curve and requirements.
A long, quiet ten minutes passed. Yan wasn’t sure he had moved. Moirrey had been a statue.
Finally, he turned to her.
“Would you call that thing a Type-5 beam?” he asked, feeling his face scrunch up.
She thought about that for a second.
“Technically, it might ratchet up and become a Type-6, if we can through-put enough power without blowing the coolant system apart,” she replied in tight voice. “Five point six in this configuration.”
Yan nodded and pushed a button that projected the image into the air between them, so he could rotate it more easily and envision the harness that would hold it.
“This thing’s the size of a heavy cruiser, all by itself,” Yan observed.
“Which suggests a station-mounted posture, at least in the beginning,” Moirrey completed his thought. She had gotten good at that, too. “A battlestation of a scale comparable to a Starbase. And about as mobile.”
“And even less functional,” Yan continued the thought, completing hers. “Especially since you would have to move an entire station as a turret in order to aim it. I presume you want something else? I’ll point out that most of your need is going to be three or four rings of generators and capacitors, which are not in this design.”
“I woke up this last Tuesday with an itch,” Moirrey said. “Jessica doesn’t have me on a watch rotation, for the most part. Nor does Oz. Caught Nina and bounced ideas off her over breakfast, then came down here and been working pretty much non-stop since then. Ev’n Digger’s gettin’ antsy, n’stuff.”
Now she was grinning, like the normal Moirrey, and not the weird scientist that had apparently taken over the woman’s body.
“So what do you need from me?” Yan pivoted.
“You’n’Pops’r the best,” she replied, deadly serious with a goofy grin. Moirrey again. “But Iowerth’s too tr’dition’l fer some a’this. Too linear. We needs ta goes way outside th’box here.”
She paused to root around on the tabletop for a moment, picking up a piece of printout and handing it to him.
Yan noted only a handful of needs. Dimensions. Input, throughput, output. Cooling.
That was it.
“I needs ya ta builds me one somethin’ capable of using that,” she said. “Jessica will convince Fleet to build us one.”
“One?”
“Bucko, that’s St. George’s lance,” she said, that angry dragon of legend appearing in her eyes. “We needs ta slay one wyrm. N’I’m already tryin’t’figger hows to shield against it afterwards. No’ be easy. We kills Buran and hopes peace breaks out, like dandelions, but sure as hell not telling the old Red Admiral ’bouts this. New Red Admiral be twitchy ’nuff.”
“How soon?” Yan asked.
“Afore we gets home,” Moirrey said. She took a deep breath and transformed again. “That weapon might be the single most dangerous thing I ever design in my life, Bedrov. Guard the secrets with your soul.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Yan said, stuffing the paper into his pocket and turning to leave.
She had already tuned him out. Gone back to whatever place Moirrey the goofball had to hide herself when she had to do things like this. When she had to go build super-weapons capable of killing thousands or millions, instead of just making better glitter bombs.
Yan supposed that was how she stayed sane. More glitter.
But he had a few ideas. Now he just needed to kill a few electronic trees figuring out which one would work best.
Chapter LX
Date of the Republic November 20, 400 Hall of Governance, Taymyr , Trusski
A knock at the door, when she wasn’t expecting any company, caused Amala’s staff to transform.
Pinchon Swarovski was already a killer, but right now it became the difference between a blade quietly sheathed in her boot, and one drawn. Vibol Harmaajärvi had already packed most of his gear into the two shipping cubes that just accidentally happened to provide solid cover if he needed to kneel and open fire on someone coming through the door.
Amala had pointedly not asked where the pistol in his hand came from. It was not Imperial nor Republic issue.
The others made themselves scarce, but that was in line with planning. They were professional bureaucrats, paper-pushers, not security marines. Or tailors.
Amala stood and nodded to Pinchon. His pistol was carefully concealed in a shoulder-rig under a loose jacket that Vibol had made special for him.
Her killer moved to the door, slid back the bolt, and braced a foot before opening it. If it was the end, they wouldn’t have knocked. Amala wouldn’t have. She would have either blown the door off the hinges, or pumped a sleeping gas quietly into the chamber, depending on how dangerous she rated the occupants.
Words were murmured, but Amala was clear across the long room, seated at a conference table and wondering what she could throw, in a pinch, and how heavy the table was if she needed to flip it over for cover.
Pinchon opened the door the rest of the way and stepped to one side in such a way that he could draw, shoot, and slam the door in one motion.
Gan Ve stood in the doorway, dressed in his most severe and finest robes. The look on his face conveyed utter seriousness, but his walk was casual as he stepped into the room. He was alone, which was a bad sign, but only politically. Normally, he brought a handful of scholars, like ducklings, with him everywhere.
“Bhattacharya Yuey Anne Siddhartha Michelle Amala,” he announced in a flat, emotionless tone. “Scholar and Ambassador, you are commanded to appear before the Khan.”
Amala let a breath quietly out. If nothing else, at least the waiting was over.
She had always hated that part more than anything else. Combat was combat, whether you were policing for pirates or hassling semi-legitimate businessmen pushing the margins of commerce. It was that time waiting in JumpSpace for things to kick off that always drove her to distraction.
Amala rose from her chair. She hadn’t been planning on a court appearance today, so she was dressed well but not to kill. And Gan Ve didn’t look like he was willing to wait.
She bowed to the man commensurate with his rank and position and moved to the door, quietly signaling Pinchon and Vibol to stand down.
“I attend,” she replied as she got close enough.
Scholar Ve nodded succinctly and pivoted. As he made his way out the door, Amala used hand signals to instruct her people to begin destroying anything sensitive they may have to abandon.
Something in the air had that finality to it.
Do. Or die.
She followed Gan Ve through the halls at his measured pace. It was some mark of honor on his part that he did not feel the need to guide her with one hand, as he had done early on, but simply assumed that she would follow, like the little ducklings in his wake normally did.
At the door to the Great Hall, Ve stepped to one side and bounced his voice off the ceiling.
“The Scholar: Bhattacharya,” he announced simply. Nothing more.
Nothing friendly.
Amala entered the room, prepared to find the Steadfast at Dawn security crew returned, with handcuffs and shock wands. Instead, she found an older man, desperately, nervously out of place, standing close to the Khan. The stranger appeared afraid that the authorities were coming for him.
Amala came to rest and gave the Khan the most proper bow she could manage.
“My Khan, how may I serve you?” she asked carefully.
She stood and waited for the boom to drop. Amala didn’t think it would be a shot in the back, as had concerned her when she first arrived here, but Yuur was playing his cards close to the vest.
“You have lied to us, Scholar Bhattacharya,” the Khan pronounced her doom. “You are a spy, sent to steal our secrets for your foreign masters. We hereby revoke your Ambassadorial credentials and order you to vacate this planet within three days. Because your Admiral Keller cannot be reached, I have ordered this captain to transport you to a place from which you may be expected to get home safely.”
The man with the Khan made sense now, as did his nervousness. He had apparently just been ordered to take his country ship into the war, probably without any hope of surviving, or even getting his ship back, if those foreign devils chose to take it from him.
“My Khan, I must protest,” Amala said, carefully staying within the bounds of proscribed behavior and vocabulary. No doubt, the good folks from Samara would be right pissed when they got back, if she had been cast out and was beyond their idea of justice. “I am a Scholar, and not a spy. I will admit to having been a Warrior, yet I have acted within strict moral, ethical, and legal bounds at all times while among you.”
“You have, Scholar Bhattacharya,” he replied, his eyes softening, even if his voice did not waver. “That is why you are being exiled, rather than arrested. Your credentials are no longer valid. You will remove yourself from my sight, return to your quarters, and pack everything. Captain Ko will return to his ship and await your embassy’s arrival. Begone.”
Not much to say to that. If the locals had done a crash course on the Laws of Recognized Warfare, Amala had gone deep into the sorts of diplomatic precedent here, after her talk with the ducks.
She bowed deeply to the Khan, holding it longer than was appropriate, and let her eyes smile at him as she straightened. Captain Ko rated a lesser bow, still not as good as the one he actually got, but Amala deemed it worth her while to put the man at ease.
Finally, she turned and bowed to the whole Court, unknowing witnesses to the game the Khan was playing on them, tame little ducks who would report honestly that she had angered their leader, and been cast out, perhaps not realizing how critical the timing was.
Amala followed Gan Ve out of the room silently, through suspiciously empty corridors, as if she was suddenly a contagion that would transmit the Khan’s rage unto innocents.
Silly, little quackers.
Pinchon answered the door with a hand out of sight when she returned.
“Scholar Ve, you have my eternal gratitude for all that you and your staff have done for me and my people while we have been here,” Amala said with a deep bow.
She would have never been able to do any of this without his gruff assistance.
He broke character just enough to smile and nod back to her, safely out of sight of everyone, before the façade returned and he left.
Amala made sure the door was closed and bolted by her own hand.
She turned to the rest of the staff, peeking in from corridors and doorways.
“Burn everything we can’t haul personally,” she ordered. “Khan’s given us a ride and three days to get gone. I want to be in orbit by night. Move.”
A whirlwind of chaos ensued. Papers burned and ashes stirred. Various media derezzed or bashed with a hammer to destroy the contents. Vibol guarded the door, since everything he had was already packed and mobile.
A quick dinner even provided an excuse to destroy the stocks of good food they had acquired, although Amala saved three bottles of local wine for the folks back at the fleet. Collectors’ items, once owned by Aquitaine’s first Ambassador to Buran.
The Fleet Centurion would get a laugh out of owning one.
Three hours, and the place was as sterile as her team could get it without a professional service. Amala opened the front door to four youngish guards, looking nervous, no doubt at the amount of noise emanating from the embassy.
“You will inform Scholar Ve that we are ready to begin transporting ourselves and our goods to the port,” she ordered the oldest.
The kid blinked, but she closed the door in his face before he could speak.
Fifteen minutes passed before a knock at the door. Vibol answered, having dressed in his finest outfit for exactly the occasion. Amala decided he looked something like an old Revivalist priest of Vishnu, in the black and gold robes of the Middle Sect.
He was significantly taller than Ve, but stepped clear and pulled the door with him.
“Scholar Ve of Trusski,” Vibol announced to the room, in case anybody wasn’t already staring.
Gan Ve stepped to the threshold and looked briefly at the piles of boxes and bags. He nodded to himself and turned in place.
“Bring the carts,” he said conversationally.
The four guards were still out there, but now a dozen workers in less-formal robes hurried into the room, with flatbed carts on wheels. Amala’s people supervised the loading, and watched like hawks, but everything seemed as it should be.
“Scholar Bhattacharya?” Gan Ve asked simply.
“Scholar Ve, we are prepared to depart,” she replied.
He surprised her by stepping forward and taking her arm, but he had the slightest hint of a grin on his face as they led the long string of camels into the desert of the palace’s empty corridors.
In the courtyard, the same transport limo, followed by probably the same three trucks. Amala and Ve rode in back, with Pinchon and Vibol facing them from the middle and two nameless staffers up front. Everyone and everything else went into the trucks, except that leather, diplomatic courier bag Vibol had originally made for her, which held a few papers, some mementos, and Keller’s bottle of wine.
Would not do to lose that, after all this.
The ride was silent. Ve seemed to be meditating on the future, but Amala and her men were preparing for a firefight when the car arrived.
Instead, they rolled up to a distant corner of the landing field, where the same two columns of troops were lined up for inspection.
So, going out with style?
Gan Ve escorted her to the exact threshold of the line of troops and then let go of her arm.
“Scholar Bhattacharya, you are commanded by the Khan to exile,” he intoned carefully, following a script in his head. “If you return, it will be considered an act of war, rather than diplomacy, and will be dealt with as such. You are persona non grata on Trusski.”
Amala turned, studied him for a second, and then leaned in and kissed him on the cheek.
She could not, for the life of her, think of a better way to throw Gan Ve completely sideways. And it worked. He couldn’t have been more stunned if she had slapped him upside the head with a four-days-rotting sand shark.
Amala turned, grinned fiercely at the two lines of honor guard, then strode down the corridor like a conquering empress. The evident mirth on the faces of the troops as she walked regally past were priceless.
Captain Ko waited just inside the hatch, with a small crew of faceless minions or bureaucrats. They were exactly like the sorts of country craft crew she had dealt with innumerable times while blockading Thuringwell or other places. Gray, and drab.
Still, they were her ride home. She bowed to the silent captain and moved to one side as her people filed into the space.
Ve had brought enough crew to the port. Loading her embassy’s gear took all of one trip into the spacious cargo hold on the otherwise-tiny vessel.
Amala and her people were directed to a crowded crew compartment. Captain Ko entered after a few moments.
