The Red Admiral Page 2

  Perhaps he should suggest the simple logo of the Imperial fleet in gold and white, on the dark blue fabric the navy used.

  Patriotic, but demure.

  Another aspect of the avalanche that threatened to bury him.

  The last person to enter was a man Joh had never formally met. Oh, he had read any number of hastily-compiled dossiers on the fellow, but there was little actually known about him, except what his spies had learned, mostly from Jessica Keller or her Prime Minister, Desianna Indah-Rodriguez. And even that was sparse. The man was something of a cypher, and quietly went about his business with the care of a blacksmith making horseshoes.

  Yan Bedrov, pirate.

  Mid-forties. Tall and skinny, with dark hair buzzed tight against his skull, both receding and graying. He wore a charcoal-gray outfit that conveyed formality, but retained hints of the barbaric underneath, mostly in the patterns sewn into what might otherwise be a simple jumpsuit. Fitting for a man who had been a pirate most of his adult life, and now served the Queen of the Pirates herself, Jessica Keller.

  Joh had heard enough from Em to make up his mind. Em and Jessica had put the entire thing together in strict secrecy, since what they had proposed was technically treason of the highest order. At least until Joh gave his personal assent.

  Being Emperor of Fribourg meant that some things required official sanction. It had to happen here, in this room, with all the symbolism and history contained therein.

  “Please,” Joh said warmly, gesturing to his visitors. “Be seated.”

  Jessica ended up across from Em, on Joh’s left, with Moirrey and Casey on that side, and Bedrov next to the Grand Admiral. An interesting balance, female to his left, and male to his right. Hopefully not a psychological separation, but just luck of the draw.

  Joh rested his right hand on the small, leather satchel he had brought with him. There were easier ways to have done this thing, but someone, somewhere, would get the wrong impression.

  Treason was contagious. It did not exist in this room, but he had to inoculate an entire interstellar empire against it.

  Joh studied each of the seated faces, starting with Em and working his way around the table.

  Calm. Poised. Excited. Grinning. Serious. Thus he would always remember them.

  “Will the Peace hold, Fleet Centurion?” he asked Jessica in a formal, canted tone. History would record this conversation, and replay it for centuries.

  Jessica fixed him with eyes like emeralds on fire.

  “On my oath,” she replied simply. Nothing more.

  Joh felt the immense power of those words.

  Empires could be built on them.

  If Fribourg was to survive, he would have to do exactly that.

  Joh nodded slowly and turned to Em next.

  “Is this the best way forward?” he asked his oldest friend.

  Em nodded slowly.

  “It is perhaps the greatest gamble any of us will ever take, Your Majesty,” Em replied. “I do not believe anything less will succeed.”

  Joh nodded again. So much of this was playing for the galleries, but it had to be done.

  Future historians would pore over this day, writing entire volumes of Imperial history that started now, Chapter One, with that door opening.

  “Lady Moirrey?”

  “I’ll makes ya proud, Sire,” she chirped in that thick, barbaric accent she always carried with her, a reminder of a home on distant Ramsey. Joh made a note to visit it, someday, circumstances allowing. Moirrey deserved that much.

  He had no doubt about her words, or her calm confidence. No less than Emmerich Wachturm had been convinced that Lady Moirrey, zu Kermode of Ramsey, held the key to defeating Buran, The Eternal, the self-styled Lord of Winter.

  “Lady Casey, will you speak with my voice?” he asked his youngest, no longer a child, but turned now into a fierce warrior by association with other such folks. Folks he trusted and respected.

  “I will, Your Majesty.”

  Avalanche. No woman had ever spoken for the throne.

  Ever.

  Before Casey did it.

  His Imperial Majesty Karl VII turned to the last person at the table. He picked up the leather satchel, weighing it both physically and emotionally for a second, before reaching out and placing it into Yan Bedrov’s firm hands.

  “The complete technical specifications of the Paladin-class battleships, including as-builts of the IFV Amsel, the Blackbird, as she has been repaired, following the raid by Buran. Also, everything we have been able to learn about the naval architecture of the star nation known as Buran,” Joh said formally. “Yan Bedrov, do you understand the task at hand?”

  “Aye, sir,” the man replied, even now acknowledging no liege but Jessica, as was proper. His voice was a high baritone that conveyed an utter conviction that made even Jessica’s word seem doubtful by comparison. “I will forge you a sword.”

  A sword? Yes, Joh supposed so. But not just any sword. No, this one would, by the everlasting Grace of God himself, be wielded by Jessica Keller.

  Joh drew in another breath. Released it.

  He studied his daughter, aware that no father wanted to push his children out of the nest, but that the survival of everything Joh and his predecessors had spent their lives building might possibly rest on her shoulders. It would be a test even greater than saving the Empire from Sigmund.

  Her blue eyes stared calmly back. She reminded him of her mother, that same poise, that same strength.

  It would be good.

  “As my representative, you will be provided a staff of experts,” Joh said simply. “It is my understanding that Jessica’s flagship, Kali-ma, has space on the final ring to add another transport shuttle, similar in size to the vessel known as Baxter, and that she has agreed to transport it, and you, as a diplomatic mission to Ladaux. We will also send a courier vessel, as well as a fast freighter loaded with trade goods, the latter of which will accompany Kali-ma on to Petron.”

  Casey nodded silently. This had all been worked out ahead of time. This was just the legal paperwork to absolve these people from guilt and responsibility, if something went wrong later.

  By Imperial Command…

  Joh glanced over at Em and received the slightest nod of assent.

  “There will be one addition to your team, Lady Casey,” Joh continued. “An expert transferred from the Imperial Naval Staff who will advise you on economic issues, given the nature of your task.”

  That broke through his daughter’s calm poise. Joh could see the slightest hint of confusion in the back of her eyes, morphing quickly into nothingness as she got control of her face an instant later. An Imperial Princess understood the power of projecting calm.

  “Who, Your Majesty?” she asked, taking the obvious cue with grace.

  Joh let his glance trail over to Jessica Keller. This was the greatest risk. Hints had been suggested, but nobody had been willing to simply walk up and ask the woman’s opinion.

  Joh realized now that he had made a grave mistake, not asking Em to simply throw diplomacy to the winds on this one and ask her, but everything he had heard, from everyone with even tangential knowledge of the situation, suggested that this was the right course of action.

  Avalanche. Only history would be able to say if he had judged correctly.

  “A captain from the Fleet side,” Joh replied. “An expert economist with a solid naval grounding who can speak capably on obscure technical topics with Republic engineers.”

  Jessica’s eyes flared, just the slightest bit. Nothing else. No change of breathing. No blush.

  No palm slamming angrily down on the table top, either.

  “Captain Torsten Wald will be joining your mission.”

  Overture: Kier

  Ural Starbase: Samara. Status: At rest

  In one of the ancient tongues, Chéngbǎo meant castle, when the term suggested stout stone walls on the surface of a planet, proof against wild and dangerous barbarians raiding across b
orders. Before foolish emperors built grand walls that spanned continents.

  From her conference room just off of her ship’s bridge, Xi Derag Ahma Kier considered nearby space, the wall of hollow darkness that filled nearly a quarter of the display screen in front of her.

  In historic terms, geographic ones, a nearly-impassable desert, such as once separated the homelands from the decadence of the coastal nations. Or the endless marshes and forests on the western frontier, behind a single wall of mountains that had kept those barbarians at bay for a time.

  As The Eternal, the Lord of Winter reminds us, time is on a circular track, returning again and again, as humans are unable to break out of the biological patterns of entropy and destruction. Even today, a new tribe of barbarians threatens once more to bring it all down. Only we will protect The Holding.

  She looked around from the viewscreen at the rest of her bridge and the men and women who commanded the Buran Angustidens Steadfast at Dawn. As a Nightmaster, the vessel was the anchor of the entire border fleet on this swathe of the terrible gulf that both sides called M’Hanii, stretching sideways for light centuries in the gap between arms of the galactic plane.

  At Samara, the Lord of Winter had decreed a Barricade, a stronghold, a line in the dirt drawn with a saber. A mark that even the barbarians could understand, one that proclaimed “Here, and no further.”

  Time and again they had come, only to be thwarted, as their supposedly advanced technology failed in the face of the greatness that was The Holding. The Eternal. Humans were too fallible to face the might of Sentient systems.

  Thus would they always fail.

  Five faces stared back at Kier from around the conference room’s table, representing not just the normal three of a Buran warship, but a fourth for the child vessels that Steadfast at Dawn carried with her between worlds and the fifth who was her new master of spies, one recently returned from personally witnessing the barbarians known as Fribourg.

  He was a hard, lean man who somehow looked subtly wrong to her. Unconsciously, she recognized that the man was from an obscure genotype, rare in The Holding, but common in the lands of the barbarians. Eyes at once too round and too flat, lacking the subtle fold at the outer edges. Skin that looked utterly washed out without the golden undertones of the homelands. Irises that were rimmed in green, rather than the uniform brown so prized for conformity.

  It made him stand out as an individual, rather than a member of The Holding, which must have been painful when he was younger, but put him in a position to better serve by impersonating one of the outsiders regularly, the better to understand what foolish deviltry they would be up to next.

  “What have they learned?” she asked the spy.

  Even his mannerisms were strange, but this was a man who lived inside the life of another, behind a mask whose slippage would inevitably lead to his own execution.

  “The warlord-queen Keller has returned to her own distant holdings,” he said simply. “What few of my sources remain safely in place can report little without risk greater than any possible reward, so little is known, but we surmise that she will not return soon.”

  He stopped to take a drink of water. Each of them had containers secured to the table top, but only his actually held anything. This was a crew of warriors, not scholars. There would be time for refreshment after the briefing.

  Kier waited while the man drank and composed his thoughts.

  “The plot having been thwarted, the men who might have been able to tell the Emperor anything useful all died in the coup attempt,” he continued. “The hereditary leader of Osynth B’Udan and several of his immediate staff knew more, but wisely fled as soon as possible and escaped to Buran, where they have been given asylum. The man is an inveterate conspirator, so he will eventually be settled in a golden cage on a world much closer to the Core, to live out his days in isolated splendor.”

  “And the risk of another Imperial assault on The Holding?” Kier pressed. This was the one thing that concerned her. Assassins could handle the rest.

  “With Wachturm promoted to supreme command, the risk is greater than it has ever been,” the spy replied. “Previous Grand Admirals were political creatures. Wachturm is a Warrior.”

  Enough said. Scholars loved to talk, to dicker, to maneuver their foes into traps. Warriors would go for the throat.

  Kier had studied Emmerich Wachturm as much and as closely as his greatest fan might have, aware than the Fribourg Emperor has been planning to dispatch the man to finally face Buran, to face her, directly.

  With him in supreme command, he would not come personally, so would have to rely on lesser commanders, weaker tools, to try to execute his will.

  Xi Derag Ahma Kier understood in her soul that only Emmerich Wachturm was good enough to threaten Buran’s hold on this frontier, this beachhead holding all of M’Hanii. Most of the rest of Fribourg’s admirals barely rated a footnote.

  If the one known as Keller had indeed returned to her own barbaric holdings on the distant fringe of the galaxy, Fribourg was doomed.

  Emissary

  Chapter I

  Date of the Republic July 17, 399 Fleet HQ, Ladaux

  The most interesting thing about the hall, now that Jessica had gotten thirty minutes to size everything and everyone up, was the way the small hearing room had been organized, small by government standards anyway. It had been arranged such that a speaker could address the Committee from a slightly-raised platform, one that still put his head several steps below that of the men and women facing him at a long angle, safe atop their own high stage, behind a heavy and official table, the one with their names and planetary ridings spelled out in front of them.

  The nineteen men and women who sat on the Senate Select Committee for the Fleet of The Republic of Aquitaine.

  The Committee.

  The exact group that were the civilian control of the Navy itself. Most of them were long-serving politicians with significant experience on the topic. Several were retired fleet officers of one type or another, usually from one of the Fifty Families that formed the social backbone of the Republic.

  At the center was Senator Tadej Horvat, former Premier of the Senate, former Command Centurion, and, for the last several years, Chairman of the Committee after his party had lost control of the Senate, brought down in the same scandals that destroyed Jessica’s old nemesis, Bogdan Loncar.

  Tadej was a tall and broad-shouldered man sporting a round build, with sandy-blond hair finally fading to white, although she doubted that the original color was natural. The man was in his sixties and known to be a touch vain.

  But at the same time, he and Nils Kasum, First Lord of the Fleet and Jessica’s mentor, seated opposite at another table, had been friends since boarding school. Horvat had become one of her guardian angels, and one of the reasons Jessica had gotten as far as she had, as early as she had, promoted to Fleet Lord younger than any other person in more than a century.

  She owed Horvat, and Kasum, a debt she doubted she could ever repay.

  Jessica wondered how far today would stretch that. Angry scowls were brewing.

  Interestingly, from her seat in the audience, she had the best view of all the players.

  On her right, the Committee, dressed like resplendent peacocks in colorful tunics and suits. On her left, the seven men and women who were the Lords of the Fleet in black. Civilians, but frequently at odds with the Committee, from whom they took orders and tried to carry them out.

  In the audience, several random groupings of folks, some she knew and some she did not, with two very special characteristics about them: important and interested enough to be invited to something this secret, as well as possessing a security clearance at the highest possible level that would allow them to be here.

  Even the man at the podium, having finished addressing the room and now taking questions, didn’t meet the second, especially as he wasn’t even technically a Republic citizen, but Yan Bedrov was the reason they were all her
e. He looked out over the room like a lion beset by feisty rabbits. Anyone who didn’t know the man probably mistook the serenity on his face for calm.

  Jessica knew he was angry enough to chew nails right now by the stiff way he held his shoulders and the fact that both hands were palm-down and flat on the lectern. Normally, Yan fidgeted when standing and addressing a group, hands going all directions. Movement helped him think, so he said. But he was handling their questions with grace and even occasional charm.

  Probably measuring throats for knives in his head, though.

  While she waited for the unconscionably-long-winded Fourth Lord of the Fleet to perhaps finally get around to possibly making his way to some meaningful point, Jessica studied the rest of the audience.

  Down at the end of the front row furthest from her, the current Premier, Judit Chavarría, a stocky fireplug of a woman with mahogany skin, black hair, and perfect nails, sat next to Calina Szabolski, President of the Republic, an erect, lean lady with laugh lines on her face and long, silver hair. The President was a former professional athlete of impeccable family, in direct descent from the Founder of the Republic himself, Henri Baudin.

  A few others of note amidst the three to four dozen people in the audience, mostly politicians with an interest in naval affairs, or busybodies lacking better hobbies. A goodly number of bodyguards and aides in addition, mostly toward the back of the auditorium until called upon.

  Jessica was in a first-row seat, almost in the center. Moirrey was on her right and Casey on her left, the two women wearing the identical maroon outfits Moirrey had originally sewn for their audience with Karl VII. Vo Arlo had ended up one row behind them, a quiet Gibraltar of a man in a Centurion’s uniform custom-made for the giant.

  Beside Vo, the one true stranger in this group, even now, so many months later.

  It wasn’t that Captain Wald hadn’t been a perfect gentleman, and even a touch shy. Jessica had found him charming and quite witty once he got over his natural reticence, the outsider in the larger group. And Casey truly had needed an economist of his skill for what was coming.