Empire at Gloran, page 5
Legitimate business now. Honest.
The smaller ones used to be called Pickets, because that was what they were used for. Used to be used for. Now, they were Rapid Couriers, designed to run as fast as possible between two points. And if you weren’t hauling around a lot of boarding party crew, you could go a long time between resupply runs.
“Kosnett specifically wanted me here because I can represent the old Syndicates when we run into people,” she continued. “And I know a lot of those people personally. That leaves me Tralfa to run ahead to Derragon to let them know we’re coming, and you. I need you to haul ass to Meerut and tell Dexter to recruit three ships, if he can find them, to set up a triangle run here at Urwel. The faster you move, the sooner you’ll join us at Carinae II.”
He growled at that. But that was Esser Jones. The man reminded everyone of a tornado, with long, soot-black hair back in a tail like a comet’s, and big muscles. Still something of a pussy cat, when you approached him right, but she didn’t have time to flatter the man right now.
“Hey, you want to keep flying an RAN transponder, sometimes you get the shit details, Esser,” Hollywood said, getting a little exasperated at his intransigence. “If you really piss me off, I can transfer you to this job, instead of running around with Urumchi.”
That got his attention, like an open-handed slap might.
Kosnett had hired her to put together a communications network. And everyone else was contracted to her right now. That included Esser Jones and Varmint.
And sometimes, a girl’s got to pull rank.
Esser understood that, too. He was just being balky. Too long as his own captain, answering only to the board of directors or Enforcers like Triumphant or Glorious. Not Raiders like Hollywood. Or Clippers these days.
“Straight to Carinae?” he asked now, voice and mannerisms more subdued.
“With the usual drop outs every few days to make sure everybody arrives at the same time,” she nodded. “Since you don’t have to do that, you ought to be able to drop out on Dexter, tell him everything he needs, plus give him the packet Lord Morninghawk is sending along, then chase us straight across. We’ll handle whatever resupply you need from Kosnett’s stores at that point, since you’re doing him a major favor by getting all this moving today.”
“Why does it have to happen now anyway, Hollywood?” Esser asked.
“Because people are lazy, Jones,” she retorted. “Prince Kalidoona will have his hands full with shit over there, but if we start running to Toulouse with RAN sanction, they won’t argue with us. By the time they do get their shit sorted out, it will have become a habit. What?”
He was laughing at her now, great big guffaws and peels of hilarity. It was a good thing both of them were alone in their respective offices, talking on a tight-beam comm.
The galaxy wasn’t ready to know just how big a goofball Esser Jones could be.
“What?”
“You,” he finally managed to gasp. “Ewin. Getting their shit together. Seriously?”
“Kosnett’s betting a lot on it,” she replied. “So is Dalou, in the form of Lady Kugosu, so put that in your pipe and smoke it. Aditi wants more trade. Always has, even on their own terms. Lord Morninghawk turns that on its head, because he’s the Golden Boy right now with the only person that really matters around here.”
“Oh, alright,” the man finally admitted, however begrudging. “I suppose I have to go off and save the galaxy again, like I did after Second Meerut.”
“Exactly, Esser,” Hollywood agreed, relieved that the man would listen to reason. And threats. “The faster you get gone, the better for you.”
“I’m just afraid I’ll miss all the fun,” Jones said ruefully.
“You think anybody stands a chance, if they start shit with this force?” she challenged the man.
“That’s my point, Hollywood,” Esser laughed. “Gloran might be that stubborn. And I won’t be there to watch Kosnett hand somebody his head for it. Watching the logs and scans later won’t be nearly as much fun as being able to taunt those poxy bastards in real time when they try.”
“Then you best haul ass, Varmint,” she ordered. “Maybe you can get back fast enough, if you’d stop arguing with me.”
“Yes, mother,” Esser chortled. “Back soon.”
And he was gone.
Hollywood cut the line from her end and leaned back to study her office. She spent a lot of time on the stations with Dexter Milose, the Governor of Meerut, and his staff.
Current governor, she amended herself. Kosnett had asked her if she wanted to become the next Governor, or the Fleet Admiral/First Centurion of that little fleet, or go into business.
This still felt like the best option, long term. At some point, somebody would try their luck attacking Meerut again. Maybe with enough force to actually succeed.
At least until Kosnett brought in a wall of Heavy Dreadnoughts and curb-stomped the responsible parties. Irresponsible parties, because he’d warned everyone.
Yaumgan wasn’t dumb enough to challenge him. Gloran might. If they could bottle stubborn and sell it, they’d be rich, but in many ways, they were as badly disorganized as the fools at Ewinhome, just in a different direction.
The Princes were all about the blood. If you had it, you could be a big-time player. If not, you were a peon.
Gloran was the warrior culture. Aggressive, militant, hardass. Hard work got you promoted, rather than blood like Ewin and Dalou, or connections like Aditi. Any commoner could aspire to become a Fleet-Captain, or even a War-Captain. Historically, a few crazed berserkers had either married into the Imperial Family or been adopted when it made the most sense for them to inherit power.
Better than civil wars. At least for the locals.
Pirates like she’d been, once upon a time, had thrived during periods of instability and chaos, since fleets were too busy chasing each other off to stop and protect every little irrelevant colony.
Which was why some dumbass had hit Carinae II. And why it didn’t make a damned bit of sense that they had. Dalou was stable. Aditi was stable. Gloran might be next up for crazy, but they were stable now, and would be angry.
Was that the thing? Make the Emperor too angry to listen when Kosnett came along with a new future?
Who came out ahead?
Hollywood Ward didn’t have any ideas, but she had a few days to mull it over. Esser and Varmint would be hauling ass to catch up. Kosnett might be willing to take a little extra time from here, just to give Tralfa a chance to get to Derragon with his messages from the First Centurion.
Which suggested that the first major confrontation would occur in Carinae’s orbit.
What did they have to look forward to?
CARINAE II
ELEVEN
DATE OF THE REPUBLIC MARCH 14, 412 RAN URUMCHI, WAYPOINT FIFTY-THREE
Iveta had asked Phil to take a longer break at this second-to-last waypoint, just so she could assemble all the Tactical Officers and talk in person. That meant all of the Senior Centurions she needed.
The Tactical Officers off the Corvettes were an even mix. Four men, three woman. What you got in the RAN, plus Auke Alma off Viking, the big genius who reminded everyone of a giant hummingbird.
It also meant Arya Chaudhari of Aranyani instead of Kaur Singh. Plus both Right Gunner Ju Tou and Left Gunner Ying Xa-Mu off Li Jing, leaving Captain Xue Dao Zhiou minding the ship.
Captain Sugawara off Forktail, but only Commander Iyo Takahashi of Storm Petrel, a tall Rajput with a fierce, if well-trimmed, beard, instead of Captain Yukimura.
Gunner Holman, the homely redheaded woman off Hollywood who had no known first name. And a fierce growl.
Gotzon Solo, Striker of Shadowbolt had come, mostly because he had never trained his First Officer to handle combat tasks and now was not the time to start. Even he knew that.
Cruiser-Captain Khan, like Solo, was too much of a control freak to let someone else shoot things, but competent once you laid down strict rules of engagement. And had Heather yell at the fool a few times to get him to behave.
Everyone seemed to be nervous of Heather. Far more so than Phil. But then, she was the scary one, and Iveta could testify to that.
Phil was a diplomat. Even as a pirate, he’d been the Fleet Centurion of the growing force, staying with the flagship and issuing orders while Heather had been part of the boarding assault team that had captured Packmule during a raid that was still studied by marines in training back home.
And the woman had moved an entire planetoid by herself. Everyone else had just been along for the ride at Vilahana.
So Iveta had gathered her warriors in the rear conference room aft, about as far away from the Arboretum as you could get and still have space for this many people. She studied them now, a spectrum of uniforms and faces, but each of them hyper-focused, because they were here to talk about warfare.
“Phil is not here to fight,” Iveta began, just to remind everyone. “His preference is always to talk, preferably in small groups lubricated with a little wine and finger foods. However, not everyone else is that smart, so he has to have us around.”
That got a sound out of them. A little chuff of exhaled breath, multiplied by a dozen mouths. Not an angry growl. Not far from it.
“When we get to Carinae II, the Gloran Emperor might be there, since we’re letting Tralfa run ahead with the news, assuming that it isn’t already there,” Iveta continued. “This was likely to be a touchy situation, though, as someone blew up one of their colonies. Not as bad as those idiots would have done at Vilahana, but not good, either. All the men dead. All the old people. An awful lot of young women unaccounted for when the Gloran fleet got the message and sent a ship to investigate.”
The growl was there this time. Louder. None of these folks were shrinking violets. And everyone was offended at the suggestion of sexual slavery going on. That the pirates had done such things in the past wasn’t something anybody was willing to sweep under the rug today, but most of those folks had been hunted down and killed, either by Phil or other folks.
Some lines even the most corrupt folks won’t cross. You had to be plain evil.
“At Ewinhome the second time, it was necessary to wade in and stomp on things,” Iveta continued. “To stomp on people, because they wouldn’t listen to reason. Gloran is not Ewin. They will be aggressive because they are, and because we’re technically trespassing here. They will not, however, just open fire without a damned good reason.”
She was looking directly at Khan as she said that. He nodded back to her, somewhere between serene and carnivorous. Right where a lot of them were today, when you got down to it.
“What are we expecting?” Right Gunner Ju Tou asked.
On Li Jing, he was responsible for the right hand super beam, the greatly-upscaled mega Power Tap that fired over six pulses instead of three. The thing they called the Ōdachi, or Greatsword. It was an impressive weapon, especially compared to the lesser versions that other fleets had in their three-shot Power Taps.
Still paled next to the Type-4. Especially when you had to fire it, and only then could you try to achieve a lock, then hold the lock when the other guy started wriggling on the hook.
“Gloran has had time to analyze our force, Right Gunner,” Iveta replied. “To count hulls and understand that missiles and firebirds are a waste of time and magazine space when facing the RAN. They’ll leave those at home, as well as the few carriers they have started to experiment with over the last generation. Instead, we’ll be facing off with warships that have a crap-ton of Main Guns and Titan Bolts. They won’t disarm themselves as fast as a Dalou or Ewin fleet would, but we aren’t here to fight a pitched battle with them under almost any circumstances. If it looks like that’s happening, Phil’s orders are to run.”
This time, that sound was a gasp. All of them were aggressive. Only half understood how frequently you had to withhold the blade. The other half were learning, to give them credit.
“Run, Iveta?” Arya Chaudhari asked archly. She’d known them all the longest, clear back to Vilahana.
“That’s right,” Iveta acknowledged. “Get backwards out of the gravity well and Jump. There will be waypoints communicated on the final drop into realspace before Carinae II, but I expect that we’ll jump to one just long enough to round everyone up, then either shift across the Aditi border, or make a long run backwards, possibly to Urwel again.”
“Why?” several voices asked at once.
“Because the damage is already done,” Iveta reminded them. “The colony was wasted more than a month ago, so there’s nothing useful we can do except show up and offer support for Gloran in their time of need. If they order us out, we go. If the Emperor is there and orders us to attend him at Derragon, we go. If we go there, however, it will be the same sort of rules of engagement as we had at Ellariel-jo, so I want you prepared.”
“Ellariel?” Makana Christensen confirmed. As Tactical Officer of CB-502, and Erle Kuiper’s right hand, he would be the third part of any battle, as Phil had frequently assigned Task Force 502 with operations in hostile situations.
“That’s right, Makana,” she told him. “I’ll have Tactical and Flag for as long as necessary at Derragon, sleeping in the ready room while the ship stays at combat alert and Phil tries to defuse things with the Emperor. Again, that might be a run like hell situation, because they’ll likely bring in a huge fleet if they decided that they wanted to fight the RAN.”
Iveta turned to Khan now and nodded to the man.
“Juvayni is one hell of a combat vessel,” she said, to take the sting out of her next words. “However, CB-502 could take you one-on-one.”
He flinched, opened his mouth, and then closed it without ever making a sound. Shrugged, unconvinced.
So, Heather had been right. The guy was growing up. Might be dangerous if he did that. Less predictable.
“If we had to shoot our way out of orbit to escape, I will expect all of you, with the possible exception of Juvayni, to absolutely lay waste to anyone and everyone trying to stop us,” Iveta said.
“They do that, and I’ll be on your van shooting, like Shadowbolt was at Ewinhome,” Khan snapped angrily. “Or Morninghawk at Meerut. They will also have to answer to me, personally, Iveta. That is a promise.”
Iveta let him have that last word with a sharp nod.
Khan hadn’t changed sides by any stretch, but he was part of this team until his Emperor ordered him to return home, possibly in disgrace at that point to command some Penal Cruiser or something.
She wondered if he’d go at that point. Or start his own war with the backwards-ass fools who had refused to acknowledge that the future had already arrived.
TWELVE
DATE OF THE REPUBLIC MARCH 16, 412 RAN URUMCHI, WAYPOINT FIFTY-FOUR
Phil had Heather and Iveta in his office. Just the three of them, with Markus keeping everyone else out for now.
Everyone had had their say. Orders and plans had been exchanged, reviewed, polished, and understood.
“And we’re taking our time,” he said aloud, just as though he’d been speaking all along.
Both women had been with him long enough to follow along without a hymnal, at this point.
“What are you expecting, Phil?” Iveta asked.
He marked that as a point of her personal growth, that such a question, such a personal level to it, had finally become second nature.
“A small squadron that got dispatched from the capital to investigate,” he replied. “Maybe a frigate force like they do, three of them as a compact and self-contained team. And then a much larger force got rounded up and is hauling ass when they get the note that we’re planning to stop in and offer whatever help we can, en route to Derragon. It really all comes down to the emperor himself.”
“What do we know about Adric Kerenski?” Heather asked.
“Not much,” Phil replied. “Warrior, like they all are. Adopted by his predecessor when that man had no children hard enough, militant enough, to take the throne and hold it. But that’s nothing new. Only about one in three or four ever does. Usually, it is much more of a Roman model. I’m hoping we can appeal to them on that level.”
“At least he’s not known to be an incompetent drunkard, like Doysan IV was at Ewinhome,” Iveta grumbled under her breath. “More like the Shogun, then?”
“I’d split the difference,” Heather interjected. “He’s been in power for about fifteen years, so older and presumably more mature and settled. Looking forward to the day he retires, I would guess, and measuring all the young punks around him to see who might measure up. They aren’t much better about marriages as a strategic thing, so they’re more like Ewin that way than Dalou. Or rather, being the offspring of somebody important just opens doors. It doesn’t guarantee you anything once you get there. Khan’s father was demoted, transferred, and eventually worked his way back, but not all of them do. And the old man must have been legendary to do it.”
Phil nodded. He’d picked up tidbits from various folks, suggesting that Artak Khan had indeed been a serious, badass tactical and strategic commander in his time. Possibly another genius like Jessica Keller, without the protection of First Lord Kasum at that first Court Martial where she’d defied orders, saved the day, and gotten promoted to the Strike Carrier Auberon, initiating her galaxy-shaking legend.
“So what do we want out of Gloran?” Heather asked. “We’ve seen everybody else, excepting Yaumgan due to circumstances. What’s our best result?”
Phil had given that a lot of thought over the last year.
“On the map, Vilahana really isn’t claimed by anybody,” he said. “Wasn’t before we arrived, and I’ve made it clear that nobody gets to change that if they want trade with Aquitaine going forward. From Vilahana, you are quickly in Gloran or Dalou space, depending which flight vector you take, though there are few stars colonized in that region right now. Aditi sits mostly at the center of the sphere, which give them the shortest defensive lines in a war, but enemies on all sides, so they are not expansionistic in a manner similar to the old Fribourg Empire. However, there are a dozen star systems that could be claimed and developed in the Vilahana area, with more than half of them in what we might consider the Gloran sphere of influence. Right now, trade from home will have to come through Vilahana, so if the Emperor is sharp enough, he’ll start leaning this way.”
