Auberon (The Jessica Keller Chronicles Book 1) (19 page)

“Two things, Senior Flight Centurion Pavlovic,” she said calmly, firmly, trying to break through to him before the man simply gave up. “First, people die in war. Yours is the single most dangerous Occupation Specialty in the
RAN
.
Ironside
and little miss
Bitter Kitten
took on five enemy fighters, got three of them, and almost got away, but for a defense missile launched by the BattleTug as they flew by. He was, in fact, protecting her rear as she got all three kills.”

“She did that?”

The incredulity in his voice was a wonder, but she needed to break through to him now, before she lost him completely.

“She did. Now, second point,” she pressed home. “I saw the same maneuver you did, because I plotted out every possible scenario I could think of in the eighteen minutes while we jumped deeper in system. There was nothing intuitive about it.”

“Nothing?”

“No, mister,” she felt her own anger begin to boil, building on the energy that seemed to have flowed out of him. “At
Iger
? I’ll let you in on a secret that only the First Lord knows. I had seventeen contingency maneuvers planned.
St. Germaine
? Six.
Hulun Buir
? Eleven. I could go on. The point is that I spend a great deal of time in the Tactical Simulators, plotting possible scenarios and how I would respond. Then I game them out to an end point, rewind to an interesting spot, and try a different outcome.”

“Really?” he said, quiet again.

“I suggest,
Jouster
,” she replied, “that you spend less time working on your gun skills and more on your command skills. Learn to think like the enemy and out–guess them. That will keep you alive.”

“Yeah,” he said glumly.

There was a long pause. She let him think.

“So I came here to apologize to you, Commander,” he said finally. “I was angry, then embarrassed, and then confused. I let you down. I let my people down. I’m sorry.”

For a long moment, Jessica was sure she could see his soul. He was that open. It was almost scary to be able to look so deep into someone. She couldn’t imagine ever baring her soul, or her neck, so much, for anyone.

“Apology accepted, Senior Flight Centurion Milos Pavlovic,” she whispered. The moment needed quiet. “Are you ready to fly again?”

“Sir?”

“I have one more test for you,
Jouster
,” she said. “I was going to have
Uller
do it, but I’m willing to torture you with it instead.”

“Aye, sir. Do your worst.”

“You’ll be tasked with flying close escort on
Auberon
. We’ll have both of your launch rails loaded with
Shot
missiles. Useful for attacking other fighters and killing inbound missiles, but not much more than that.”

She gestured to the ship around them. “I plan to fly this great gray beast right down their throats. They will ignore everyone else,
Rajput
,
CR–264
, the Flight Wing, so they can concentrate on
Auberon
. We will just be too big a target to pass up.”

“They’ll commit to you, and leave themselves wide open.”

She could hear the wonderment in his voice as the image clicked in his mind.

“Correct,” she said. “This time,
Necromancer
will be the live blade.”

Chapter XXXI

Date of the Republic April 8, 393 Ladaux

This was another committee hearing room, although smaller than the grand public one.

Nils had his scowl firmly pasted to his face by the time he followed the Premier into the chamber.

He looked forward to what was about to happen, but shouldn’t look too gleeful. Much.

Tadej appeared angry enough to chew nails.

The Premier waited for the hubbub at their entrance to settle.

All sound died, even breathing. Eyes dropped as the Premier’s gaze settled on faces.

“Those of you who were involved, and I will know all of those names by the end of the day, will stay,” Tadej announced in a voice sharp enough to shave on. “Everyone else will depart immediately. This will be a private meeting.”

A moment of confused silence passed.

“Move!” The Premier’s voice, the former First Fleet Lord’s voice, rattle the chandelier overhead.

A handful of Senators rose with the general mob of staff and happily made their way to the door, obviously relieved to have escaped with their careers, if not their dignity, somewhat intact.

The man who had been squatting behind the Chairman rose to leave as well, but was stopped by Tadej before he took a whole step. “Brant,” Tadej thundered before dropping down to a normal speaking voice, “you will stay. You may, in fact, have a seat next to the Chairman. You will be sharing his fate.”

Nils was impressed. The Chairman’s aide shrugged, nodded politely, and settled quickly into a chair without a glance back at his boss.

In less than a minute, the room was down to six of the seventeen Senators, plus a handful of others, Senatorial staff who had decided that their fingerprints would be too obvious to scrub off.

The Premier walked to one end of the long table, forcing all heads to follow him. He put a hand down on the table as he leaned forward.

Nils was taken with the image of a headmaster about to lecture a mob of unruly middle school students. Probably not the most inaccurate description, all things considered.

Tadej let the moment hang far longer than the situation called for. From his face, he was not having a problem with the right word. Perhaps the right profanity to sum it all up in one word, if one existed, but that was something else.

“There exists,” he said finally, conversationally, “a report, detailing an attack on the Imperial planet of
Ao–Shun
, in the system
2218 Svati Prime
, am I correct?”

Heads nodded enthusiastically.

Tadej nodded back at them once.

“And the report suggests that Command Centurion Jessica Keller aboard the vessel
RAN
Auberon
attacked the planet with bio–weapons and radioactive isotopes, yes?”

More nods. Nils stood perfectly still by the front door and watched the Premier work. It was art.

This was why he let his brother handle the political side of things. The Aquitaine Navy was so much more pure and clean. Generally.

“She did not.”

The Premier let the stunned silence stretch.

“I have only just now read the executive summary of her own report, on my way down here to prevent you from committing further treason to the
Republic
,” Tadej stressed the word
Republic
, but Nils could tell the operative word that got everyone’s attention was still
Treason
.

Senators could be executed for treason. Four had been, although none in a century.

“So could someone point to the section of the report detailing Command Centurion Keller’s Crimes Against Humanity and General Crimes under the Republic Code?” It sounded like such a polite request. Like asking someone where they wanted to have lunch.

It took a moment for the realization to sink in. Followed by the panic.

Heads turned towards three people. The Chairman, his aide Brant, and Senator Tomčič. Hanging was in the cards, from those looks.

The Chairman, Patriarch of one of the wealthiest shipping clans on
Anameleck Prime
, sputtered as he worked up the words. “She must have done something,” he tried to thunder. It came out weak and indecisive. “Why else would she drop a bomb on the planet and kill people?”

Nils stepped forward at this point.
When better to kick an old enemy, than when he was down?

“Premier,” he said, “according to Keller’s report, the device was aimed at the uninhabited north pole of the planet, and detonated at an altitude of approximately 73,000 meters above sea level. The nearest town of any size was approximately 8,000 linear kilometers away from the blast.”

“Thank you, First Lord,” Tadej said graciously. He turned to the rest of the room with a warm smile, and a velvet hammer. “So we have Keller’s report. I have read that one in great detail, by the way, something none of you have done yet, I promise. That leads me to another interesting question. Where did your report originate?”

Even Nils was astounded at the mastery with which the Premier sprung his trap. And he was, oh so happy that he wasn’t in that net.

The silence stretched awkwardly.

“
Wilankadu
,” Tomčič finally spoke up.

“Ah,” the Premier smiled. He reached out and opened a copy of the report in question and flipped through it until he found the page he desired. “I see. The Independent Cantons managed to complete a detailed investigation of
Ao–Shun
in just eighty days, despite not having any resources in the region. In fact, it appears that this report, in footnote 143, specifically requests that the
Independent Cantons of Wilankadu
conduct just such an investigation. And how, just how, did it arrive here to
Ladaux
so quickly? Anyone?”

He scowled furiously down the table at the uncomfortable faces.

One of the quieter Senators spoke up finally. It was hard to hear his voice. It would have been lost in any greater level of noise. “It was my understanding,” he said, “that it was delivered to the Chairman by the Imperial Ambassador, under seal.”

Tadej smiled at the group. “Is that so? And we immediately take the word of our sworn enemy and use it to try to destroy one of our own naval officers? Is that how the Senate works, these day?”

Nils watched him walk angrily down the front of the table now. He stopped exactly midway between the Chairman and Senator Tomčič and turned towards them.

“Because if that is the case, ladies and gentlemen,” he continued, voice rising louder, “then I believe we could make a strong legal case for collaboration. The crime is Aiding and Abetting Enemies of the Republic. The
Fribourg Empire
is our enemy, although some of you seem to have forgotten that in your mad quest for revenge.”

He slammed an open palm on the table for emphasis. “This will end, right here, right now. If you want a witch hunt, I will provide the press enough witches that the Senate needs to hold new elections in order to seat a quorum. Am I understood?”

Heads nodded. Nils found his own unconsciously among them. He kept his smile inside. There really was no doubt why this man was in charge.

Tadej pointed at the Chairman with a finger that looked like Zeus’s bolt ready to fly. “You will print an apology to Keller and a retraction in the press. I don’t care if it is buried on page six. I want it in print. Tomorrow.”

Tadej turned to Nils with that same finger. “And you will make sure that that apology is delivered to her with the next supply run, so she is not spending her time worrying about fools on the home front when she should be fighting a war.”

“Aye, sir,” Nils nodded. “It will be done.”

Tadej turned back to the rest of the room. “Here is the deal I will offer you. Keller is now under my protection, not just the First Lord’s. If you decide to go after her, I will forward this entire affair to the Grand Justice Of the Republic and ask her to investigate everyone in this room, absolutely everyone involved, for treason. Senatorial immunity will be revoked for the course of such an investigation.”

Even Nils hung on his words. Short of an actual execution, this was about as dangerous as politics in the
Republic
ever got.

The silence became oppressive. “I see we have an understanding, then, ladies and gentlemen. Please convey it to all the key players not in this room as well. I am not happy. I am not bluffing.”

He turned his back on the Senators at that point and deliberately smiled at Nils as he began walking towards the door.

“First Lord,” he said, “I would greatly appreciate if you would join me for dinner. We will need to see how we can salvage the
Cahllepp Frontier
from all this amateur meddling.”

They exited the room, arm in arm.

Ξ

Nils looked at the bottom of the bottle owlishly. That was the fourth? Fifth?

It had been very good wine, wrapped around an amazingly good meal. He looked across the private booth to his old schoolmate chum, Tadej, equally owlish.

The man burped.

“We’re going to have to publish at least some of Project Mischief in the press soon,” the Premier muttered darkly. “Otherwise, too many people will be calling for her head on a pike.”

“Not all,” the First Lord replied evasively. “Just the bits about how the bomb was constructed. Some of the other ideas need time to be used on the
Fribourgers
.”

“So, Nils,” he began, “what will you do with Keller?”

“Well, Tad,” Nils hiccupped, “I had hoped to leave her out there for a year under an independent command and let her cover herself and her crew in such glory that we had to promote her to Fleet Lord and bring her back to the main action. Not sure what to do now.”

Tadej nodded sagely and looked at the shattered remains of his tiramisu. “I think it might be wiser to leave her there for a while, Nils. If she’s causing this much grief to the
Fribourgers
in the first six months, imagine what she could do with time and support.”

“Well, yes,” Nils said, “but I don’t want her forgotten out there. I’ve read the dossiers on her officers and many of them should never have been sent that far from the main fleets. Something is wrong in my own organization to allow it.”

“Well, you do your job and sort it out,” the Premier said quietly, “I have long term plans for that woman.”

Nils couldn’t help the shudder than ran down his spine at the Premier’s words.

What plans?

Chapter XXXII

Date of the Republic March 17, 393 Top of the 2218 Svati Prime system

It was seductive, watching the big projection slowly rotate above the table. Jessica sat in her big, comfortable Flag Bridge chair and contemplated the possibilities it offered her.