Persephone Read online

  Persephone

  CS-405: Book Three

  Blaze Ward

  Knotted Road Press

  Contents

  Lighthouse Station (November 1, 402)

  Cattle Ranch (November 2, 402)

  New Recruits to the Cause (November 3, 402)

  Growing Up (November 3, 402)

  Planning the Raid (November 4, 402)

  More New Recruits (November 4, 402)

  The Posse (November 5, 402)

  Seventeenth Imperial Police Protectorate (November 19, 402)

  Task Force (December 3, 402)

  Weasels in the Hen House (January 3, 403)

  The Stalk (January 4, 403)

  Wolf Pack (January 4, 403)

  Prisoners of War (January 4, 403)

  Cleanup Crew (January 4, 403)

  Preparation (January 27, 403)

  Warden (January 29, 403)

  Building the Manticore (January 29, 403)

  Admiral of the Fleet (February 10, 403)

  Mansi (February 17, 403)

  The Dragon (February 17, 403)

  The Cavalry (February 17, 403)

  Freefall (February 17, 403)

  Overwatch (February 17, 403)

  The Rescue (February 17, 403)

  Fairy Godmother (February 19, 403)

  Acting Fleet Centurion (February 20, 403)

  Flag Bearer (February 26, 403)

  Valiant (April 2, 403)

  Revolutionary (April 10, 403)

  Chaperone (April 10, 403)

  Pirates (April 11, 403)

  Resolute (April 12, 403)

  Read More!

  About the Author

  Also by Blaze Ward

  About Knotted Road Press

  Lighthouse Station (November 1, 402)

  Their charts called it Lighthouse Station, but newly-minted RAN Centurion Granville Veitengruber thought of it using the designation the Fribourg Fleet would have used: Forward Base Battenhouse, named for the first commanding officer, CS-405’s former and now semi-retired Boatswain, Bok Battenhouse.

  CS-405 was above Granville’s ship in orbit, Admiral Kosnett protecting the flock of stolen vessels against sudden surprises. RAN Packmule, the stolen mega-freighter that was their mobile larder, was down lower, where her three shuttles could make faster flights in both directions with cargo containers. RAN Queen Anne’s Revenge, the cargo ship borrowed temporarily from Kiel and Lan, was already in her descent to the planet.

  Kosnett had repeatedly made it clear that they would be returning the vessel to its rightful owners at some future point. Or replacing it if they were unable.

  “405, this is Persephone,” Granville said into the microphone. “Beginning our descent now.”

  He was in command of the fourth vessel, comprised of two C-class hulls, C-4268 and C-4711 that they had stolen and reassembled on Mansi-D into a single warship, Persephone.

  The four vessels, plus the three shuttles from Packmule, were configured to talk via tight-beam lasers these days, rather than encoded radio signals. It let them move silently while stalking their prey, since even the slightest detection of a transmission might give too much away.

  The return message from the flagship was a standard message, rather than a longer message, but it still warmed his heart. It was what would have come from the Imperial Admiral commanding, had this been a Fribourger squadron, and not Aquitaine.

  Godspeed.

  Nothing more.

  CS-405 would be deploying their administrative shuttle to bring the Admiral and his temporary First Officer down to the ground shortly, as would Packmule, with the insertion shuttle Saddlebags bringing Captain Lau and Centurion Doctor Gave as well.

  It was a Council of War, but it would be done on the ground, rather than aboard the flagship, on an anciently-terraformed planet that Buran had never gotten around to colonizing, so Admiral Kosnett had done it instead. If they were to be pirates, and they thought of themselves that way, then nothing was going to be done by halves.

  That included Granville making his first landfall in a stolen and salvaged warship that had once belonged to the Fribourg Empire, before vanishing from history more than a decade ago.

  They were both coming home.

  Cattle Ranch (November 2, 402)

  Heather was simply amazed at how much work had been completed in the time they had been gone to Mansi. More fences were up, with small turrets added in several places, presumably tracking predators wanting to bother the cattle or chickens that now called Lighthouse Station home.

  She stood on the front porch facing west. From here, she looked up the hill to the closest cattle pen, and beyond that, the ring of mountains that sealed this valley off from the rest of the planet. Downhill, the slope slowly faded down into the massive lake that sat at the bottom of the valley.

  In front of her, Bok had leveled a massive-enough space that they had been able to put all the vessels down at once: Phil’s admin shuttle, her insertion shuttle, Siobhan’s freighter, and Veitengruber’s cutter.

  All those ships. They had started in April with just CS-405, and it was only November.

  “Hey,” Siobhan suddenly stuck her head out the front door and barked. “Phil’s ready. Wanna get your butt in motion?”

  “Coming,” Heather replied, turning to follow Lady Blackbeard into the front room.

  When they built this place, the crew had thrown together a quick frame for a house. Two stories and big enough for the four people on permanent assignment to each have their own room. It was also big enough that thirty more could stay here, lacking only enough bathrooms and water heaters for a mob like that.

  Instead of a traditional salon, the front door opened onto an Operations Center, such as it was. Rough-hewn tables one meter by three on two sides of the room. Every spare chair that they had been able to break out of storage on 405 or steal along the way looked like a bizarrely-mismatched flock of ugly seagulls. Maps were tacked to walls and strewn on the table where Phil was holding court with a mug of fresh tea in one hand, made from the first batch of leaves cut and dried on Lighthouse Station by First-Rate-Spacer Shelby Flud.

  They had even located something vaguely equivalent to maple trees in the nearby forest, except these had sap that ran all year long, however slowly, so they had tapped them for a sweetener syrup. Crazy, redneck homesteaders, the lot of them.

  She took the empty chair next to Veitengruber and measured faces. He didn’t even have a proper First Officer yet. Hell, his whole crew right now was just two engineers: Galin Tuason and Isiah Olshefski, although he would pick up some gunners in a few days.

  Bok was here as base commander. Phil and Evan, representing both CS-405 and squadron command. Lady Blackbeard and Stunt Dude, also occasionally known as Siobhan Skokomish and Trinidad Mildon. Her and Andre, with him looking more like a line officer and less like a nurse these days. He might even come to like being in command, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

  Phil rapped his knuckles on the table to get everyone to settle down.

  “Okay,” he said simply. “We’ve done the crazy, the stupid, and the impossible. So far. We’ve established a base behind enemy lines. We’ve stolen a sector supply vessel, a scout, and a pocket warship. The black flag is hopefully inspiring a wave of terror over these two sectors, to the point that Jessica will find them softened up when she comes back, hopefully with a second Imperial fleet to kick some ass. Is it enough? The table is open for discussion. Nothing leaves this room.”

  He nodded, looking more like a presiding judge than a commanding officer, but Heather supposed he was acting the role of a Fleet Centurion these days. Or an Imperial Admiral of the White. She grinned at that thought.

  “Heather?” he asked, staring fiercely back at her.
/>   “Can we legitimately call ourselves Second Expeditionary Fleet?” she asked.

  “Stop reading my mind!” Siobhan mock-challenged her from across the table with a laugh.

  They had spent too much time together, originally as First and Second Officers under Phil, and now as breveted Command Centurions with their own ships in Phil’s squadron.

  “We may not,” Phil intoned severely. “The Senate has not authorized a new command, nor established a base for it. I am willing to usurp the First Lord as far as we’ve gone, but not the civilians above her.”

  “Awwwww,” Siobhan sulked.

  Heather had to agree. It was a fine point, but this was all about the legalisms by now. They could have, possibly should have gone home as soon as they had enough food to make the journey safely. Instead, they had expanded their war.

  Everyone at this table would face a Court Martial when they got home. Probably something along the lines of Unlawfully Absent, since no navy lawyer was ever going to be able to make Cowardice in the Face of the Enemy stick on this group.

  Phil’s career might be over. Hell, all their careers might be over. At least as long as it took for them to find the Imperial Ambassador and enlist under Karl VIII. She’d take them all in a heartbeat.

  “Sir? If I may?” Granville spoke up from next to her.

  His voice wasn’t diffident. He had gotten over the slave persona fairly quickly, but there also wasn’t the fire and craziness you would expect from a former fighter jock.

  Phil nodded.

  “Perhaps Seventeenth Imperial Police Protectorate would be more appropriate?” Granville offered. “The cutter C-4711, which provided the bow section of my vessel, was assigned to that squadron when it was taken eleven years ago.”

  “I believe we’re a little past customs patrols and Search and Rescue, but I will take it under advisement, Centurion,” Phil noted with a smile.

  Veitengruber nodded and leaned back. Heather smiled in his direction. He was fitting in with the group, remembering what it meant to be an officer in a formal navy. And he was a good man.

  “Mansi-B,” Stunt Dude spoke up, turning the conversation back to the original topic. “We’re only going to get one clean chance at it. Do we risk everything, or go home and bring in a full strike fleet? Do we have enough guns now? We’ve got crazy.”

  “Station like that doesn’t have Primaries,” Bok replied in a quiet drawl. “You’ll be facing Fours and missiles. Probably not a lot of overlap on the guns, but they’ll throw darts at you all day.”

  “And we’re an escort specifically designed to engage that sort of threat,” Evan leaned into the conversation. “Plus Persephone has guns. If they don’t have a resupply capacity handy, they’ll have to run out at some point.”

  “Evan, plot me an overlap map of the big guns when we get back to the ship,” Phil ordered, glancing to one side of the table. “Assume our Type-4 beam and add three percent, just to humor me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Now, all this talk of assaulting the planet is moot, unless one of you can explain to me how we punch a hole in their defensive net in the first place,” Phil continued.

  “Pull a Kigali,” Heather offered in a flat, humorless tone. While laughing inside.

  The room erupted with conversations at her words, which she had expected. Phil actually had to raise his voice to finally get everyone else to shut up.

  “Okay, Heather,” Phil said. “What would our crazed Navigator of an Escort Team Commander do here?”

  “He might make a high-speed run at the station in JumpSpace,” she replied. “Ride it all the way in until the edge of the gravity well kicked him out, and then open up on the station with everything he had.”

  “We’re an escort, Heather,” Phil said. “Even a splash of Type-1-Pulse beams aren’t going to do that much damage, and then you’re racing full tilt at one of the other stations, who will see you coming, and not be able to Jump clear because your Matrix has collapsed and you have to rebuild it.”

  “Not if you’re going straight down, Phil,” she smiled, turning to Granville next to her. “Persephone can land, and I’m betting none of the other stations will be able to range on her from orbit.”

  “They’ll still have missiles,” Siobhan spoke up half-heartedly.

  “Through an atmosphere at a moving target?” Heather laughed. “Please do. Every bird you waste firing down is one fewer that you can’t replace later.”

  “How does Persephone kill a station on a fencing pass?” Phil asked.

  Heather started to speak, but closed her mouth when Granville suddenly leaned forward and put his hand on the table.

  “With a bloody lot of missiles in single-shot, launch tubes around the outside of my hull,” he smiled cruelly. “Fired simultaneously with us achieving our first weapons lock.”

  “Did you two already work this out?” Siobhan sulked. “Are you leaving me out of all the fun, now?”

  “No,” Heather replied. “This was a conversation we had back on Mansi-D. Filling up the containers on Caravan with a bunch of missiles, flying up to a station like we had a food delivery, and killing the place point-blank when they lowered their shields for docking.”

  “Will it work?” Phil asked.

  Heather shrugged, and caught Granville doing the same out of the corner of her eye.

  “We’d need Kam and her crew,” she said. “But I’d tell them it was impossible. Maybe even bet them money on the topic and have them prove me wrong.”

  The whole table laughed.

  Never tell an engineer something can’t be done. Unless you want to awaken the technological beast from his torpid slumber.

  “What about me?” Siobhan’s voice had gone almost plaintive.

  “You’re a unicorn,” Heather grinned.

  “A what?”

  “A pretty horse with a magical horn in the middle of its forehead,” she continued.

  “Still not seeing it.”

  “We stole that other forward section at Mansi-D,” she said. “The front third of C-4268 that had been killed. It has a Type-3 beam mount that we salvaged in orbit.”

  “Did you just get evil?” Siobhan asked, her head turning a little sideways so she could give off some polite side-eye.

  “Maybe,” Heather agreed. “Wanna tell Markus Dunklin that there’s no way in hell he could mount it inside Anna’s forward bay and wire up enough generators and batteries that you could fire it and not cook your electronics?”

  “Yup, evil,” Siobhan agreed. “Why?”

  “Because there is still a kremlin on the surface of Mansi-B,” Phil interjected. “I would include a reasonable planetary shield overhead to protect me from orbital bombardments, just in case.”

  “Bingo,” Heather supplied. “Those are horizontal. What happens when you’re below them, coming up at him from the side and firing a Type-3 into his butt? Plus Persephone doing the same from another flank?”

  “Weasels in the chicken coop,” Bok said. “Lost two here that way, until I tuned the pulse turret on top to kill anything that small it saw inside the wire that wasn’t a chicken. Sorry about the bunnies. Got rid of the mole problem, though.”

  More laughter. Bok was sixty-two years Standard, and had been on Active Duty for more than forty of those, but in the last few months had reverted to the rancher kid from five decades ago, complete with drawl.

  “Okay, so we think we could kill the command station overhead,” Phil said. “Heather, work with Evan and whoever else you need to put together a feasibility study. We still do not know how many men are down there that need rescuing, and I’m not about to presume that one of those dead frigates or cruisers we saw in orbit will work, so we need transport to get as many home as we can. This is why I asked if we go home to get help.”

  “We could steal a cruise ship,” Andre Gave, the nurse-turned-pirate asked, a broad, crazy smile on his face suddenly.

  The whole room fell to stunned silence.

&nbs
p; “What?” he demanded sarcastically. “Just because I took a Hippocratic Oath doesn’t mean I can’t pirate with you people.”

  “Where do we get a cruise ship?” Stunt Dude asked.

  “How the hell should I know?” Andre fired back. “Go ask Lan and Kiel, maybe.”

  Heather started to laugh. They all did.

  But then they stopped. Hard silence.

  Phil had that look on his face.

  Shit, they really were going to, weren’t they?

  New Recruits to the Cause (November 3, 402)

  The shuttle had deposited them in the middle of an obvious landing field, on the surface of the new, secret base deep inside The Holding. It was early morning, local time, with the sun just coming over the eastern peaks and a fog still burning off on the lake below them on the hillside.

  Lan recognized Resolute Revolution, sitting with several other vessels. Director Kosnett’s team had rechristened her Queen Anne’s Revenge after some ancient pirate ship from Earth. She looked to be in better condition than the vessel had been when he and Kiel first purchased it, the benefit of having an entire crew of trained experts dedicated to keeping it in top shape.

  Secretly, Lan was torn. On the one hand, Director Kosnett had promised to return the vessel and make them whole in the legal sense, providing an equivalent cargo for the one he had stolen.

  On the other hand, it might be interesting if the man had to buy them a newer vessel, done up in the style of the Fribourg barbarians. They had certain technological edges that The Eldest had not pursued because his Sentient ships were good enough. But a ship that didn’t need to drop out of JumpSpace except at its target would save tremendous time for them as a commercial venture, allowing them to move between markets so much faster.