Authors: Mike Shepherd
“Can you isolate just the outside channels that we’re supposed to guard at all times? Rescue, contact, and the like?” Vicky asked.
The commander adjusted his board. Only four lines ran
across the screen. They never wiggled for so much as a tiny spike, much less an entire message.
“They transmitted no message,” Vicky said finally.
“That is where we would have copied it, and there is nothing there, Your Grace.”
“Thank you, Commander.”
“You’re welcome, Admiral.”
Without saying another word, Vicky stood and headed for the door. He asked her no questions and she told him nothing, neither lie nor truth. He had no interest in what she needed to know. He would follow her orders because she gave them.
And she would give the orders she had to give.
So the Empress is being just as silent as those bug-eyed monsters that chased me and Kris Longknife across the galaxy.
But would that change?
Worse, would the Empress meet them with some computer-generated demand from Dad, the Emperor, for them to lay down their weapons and submit?
At the door, Vicky turned back to the commander.
“If we received an audio message, how long would it take you to examine it and find out whether it was a real message or had been patched together from a whole lot of speeches?”
“That would depend. If I had the data on the person already organized, I could do it in less than a minute. If I had to search the video file, it could take longer.”
“Call up all your files on my father, your Emperor.”
“Oh,” was all he said.
“Yes,” was Vicky’s response.
As she left, Commander Blue was on his commlink. “Chief, I need you to do a little search for me. I need you to do it yourself and keep it under your hat.”
Vicky was none too sure of what the future held, but she was preparing for it.
I am no castrated constitutional Grand Duchess. I’m in the decisions for this rebellion right up to where they will put the noose around my pretty neck.
CHAPTER 55
V
ICKY
wasn’t sure where she was headed after her talk with the commander. Maybe she would just walk a bit. Think things over.
Several Sailors ran by her. One of them knocked her elbow.
“Sorry, ma’am. Admiral. Sir,” he stammered, but ran on.
An officer dashed by her at full speed. He had his act together enough to say formally, “By your leave, Admiral.” He even kind of saluted as he passed her at full gallop.
“What’s the all-fire hurry?” Vicky asked, but softly, half to herself. There had been no all hands announcement over the 1MC.
Her computer provided the start of an answer. “Admiral von Mittleburg requests your presence in his day quarters immediately, Your Grace.”
“You know why?” Vicky said as she turned and headed for
Retribution
’s quarterdeck.
“The destroyers
Wolverine
and
Wombat
have taken up station as jump-guard ships. The
Halum
was coming in at one gee. She’s now upped that to 1.5 gees. A priority one message just came in from the
Wolverine
.”
“And it said?” Vicky asked, not caring for how long this conversation was taking.
“I do not know, but the landline usage on the station and ships is about to overload the system.”
Another officer dashed past Vicky, leaving her fast-walking in his wake. He didn’t even remember to exchange courtesies.
Vicky reflected on how overloaded with survivors the
Halum
must be. The max she could push herself couldn’t be more than 1.5 gees.
Vicky took off at a full gallop. If anyone noticed a hard-charging Grand Duchess, they better just get out of her way.
On the quarterdeck, those coming aboard were being rushed in with little formality. Honors rendered to the OOD and the flag were hardly more than perfunctory. Vicky exited just as informally. The gangway going ashore was being used for more crew to come aboard.
Someone shouted “Make a hole for the admiral!” and a lot of Sailors and officers ducked to the left-hand side of the brow and came to attention.
“As you were,” Vicky said, and jogged quickly past them. She’d heard of fish that struggled to swim upstream. None had it as easy as her.
Aboard the station, there were a lot of people: Sailors, Marines, officers, and civilians racing from where they were to where they needed to be. Vicky joined the mob but soon found her way cleared by shouts of “Admiral coming through.” “Make a hole for the Grand Duchess,” and similar variations on those themes.
She got to Admiral von Mittleburg’s day quarters out of breath but fast.
He was alone with the yard superintendent, but he had Mannie’s face on a screen.
“What’s happening?” Vicky got out through gasps for breath. She hadn’t been working out nearly enough. She really needed to find a way of exercising with her security team that didn’t end up in bed.
“The Empress’s forces are breaking orbit and heading for the jump,” the admiral said.
“So that’s what all the hubbub out there is about. People are running all about.”
“I haven’t given any orders,” the admiral said through a frown.
“Well, trust me,” Vicky said, “out there, it’s all hands forward lay aft. All hands aft lay forward. All hands amidships, stand by to direct traffic.”
The admiral blew out a breath. “I wonder who leaked it.”
“Does it matter?” Vicky said. “We’ve got a lot of eager sailormen who can’t wait for a fight. That sounds good to me.”
“Yes, yes. It is good. Now, Mr. Mayor, how much can you jack up production of rockets? Do you think you can get antimatter missiles into production?”
Vicky raised an eyebrow at Mannie.
So you found out before me?
He was focused on the admiral, and something off screen and didn’t even look her way.
I guess that’s good.
“The rockets are no problem,” Mannie answered. “We’ve got a new chemical plant coming online and two fabs to load both the rocket bodies and the warheads. We’ve even got that new proximity fuse. Antimatter missiles is where the rub comes in.”
“We got you the specs and plans for them.”
“Yes, but you only got them to us last week. We’ve been modifying every reactor on this planet to catch more of the occasional bit of antimatter, but catchment is just starting to pick up. Other than that, we’ve got the rocket motors ready to go into production and the warhead-containment vessels and ignition gear ready as well. But you have to understand: You’ll be trading antimatter missiles for conventional rockets. If we don’t have the antimatter, your missiles will be stuffed with high explosives, and that’s inefficient. The rockets carry a five-hundred-kilo warhead. The antimatter warhead, even with the weight of the superconducting containment vessel removed, can barely handle a hundred and fifty kilos of regular explosives.”
“I know, I know,” the admiral said. He looked tired and frustrated . . . and maybe a bit scared. “Build your antimatter missiles to meet your highest assumption for antimatter production. If we get them, it might just let us fight outnumbered two to one and win. If the reactors don’t come through, we’re hardly worse off than when we started.”
“We will do that, Admiral. Vicky, how’s it going?”
“I’m running as fast as I can, and I’m just barely keeping pace.”
“Yes. I hope to see you when this is over.”
“Me too,” Vicky just managed to get in before Mannie
disappeared from the screen. Then she turned to Admiral von Mittleburg. “How much time do we have?”
“It’s hard to tell,” he said. “It depends on how much weight the Empress is willing to put on. One gee might give us as much as a week. The more gees, the less time we have to get those rockets we need and our ships cycled through the yard.”
He briskly rubbed the tension in his scalp. “Do we polish our ships in the yard? Dial them in as best we can? Or do we take another spin around the moon, polish our ship handling—and risk breaking a few more? Damn, but this war shit is a bitch.”
“You want to retire to that vineyard?” Vicky asked.
“No. This is what I’ve lived for my entire life. I know a lot of my classmates who would part with their right arm to be in my seat.”
He glanced at Vicky, eyes gleaming. “This is what I was born for.”
“Then what’s it going to be, a quick trip around the moon to drill your captains, or sitting here, polishing our lasers?”
“Put that way, there’s no real question, is there?”
“Then if we’re going to do it, shouldn’t we get it over with before the Empress is looking over our shoulder?” Vicky said
The fleet sortied at 0900 the next morning. A few of the casualties from the last exercise were left behind in the yard, but they were the only ones to miss the last chance they’d have to practice what they would be doing for real before the week was out.
CHAPTER 56
T
HE
Empress held her fleet to a comfortable one gee. Why was anyone’s guess. That left Admiral von Mittleburg’s ships plenty of time to fix and mend what broke during the second practice run.
Wolverine
and
Wombat
fell back well before the Empress’s fleet came through.
It was tempting to leave them there at the jump. They could have easily picked off the first destroyers to come through: two, four, maybe even six. If they were light cruisers, however, its 6-inch lasers would quickly range in on the destroyers and shoot them to pieces.
Vicky knew that in the next couple of days, she might be asking destroyers to make suicidal charges, but to ask two to stand in place, just forty thousand klicks from the jump, was a death sentence she wasn’t willing to sign.
Apparently, neither was Admiral von Mittleburg.
The destroyers fell back to well out of 18-inch range and stayed there.
No sooner had they reached a safe position than the Empress’s fleet began jumping through and forming in full battle formation. Four battle lines of nine or ten battleships
held pride of place, surrounded by cruisers and destroyers. The assault transports held at the rear of the fleet, guarded by merchant cruisers and destroyers.
Only after all this was arrayed in perfect order did the Empress’s barge stick its nose cautiously through the jump.
Immediately, it blared out an order from the Emperor to lay down their arms and submit to their proper liege lord.
Vicky was prepared for that. As Commander Blue and his leading chief ran the message through their voice recognition analysis, Vicky stood, in full vice admiral and Grand Duchess mode, and demanded, “Can you authenticate that order?”
It took quite a while for her question and the Empress’s answer to bounce out and back.
“What do you mean, authenticate it? You heard the order. Obey,” the Empress demanded right back several hours later.
“Verbal orders have been known to be faked,” Vicky said. “Words can be patched together like a quilt. I say again, can you authenticate this so-called order?”
A conversation this elongated could not raise blood pressure half as high as Vicky wanted, but it served its purpose and bought time. She already had Commander Blue’s answer.
“You little bitch. You know the Emperor’s voice. You claim to be his obedient daughter though I’ve seen none of that. Submit.”
“Commander,” Vicky said, handing off her center place to an expert.
“Every one of the words in the Emperor’s order has been taken from one of nine speeches the Emperor made recently. One speech had a lot of applause behind it. It was his birthday speech. The applause has been wiped, but if you check the audio very carefully, you can spot those words for the lack of background noise. This is no order. This is a collage.”
“Thank you, Commander Blue. Now I have a word for the Navy units that just covered the Empress’s ass as she tiptoed through that jump. Lay down your arms, and you will be received readily into our fleet or allowed to go home unharmed. Fight for that blackhearted bitch against me and my father, your Emperor, and a lot of you will die. Pull out while you can.”
“You can quit talking, Your Grace,” Commander Blue said. “The Empress has closed down this frequency and is jamming it.”
“How much got out?”
“Not much after that blackhearted-bitch remark. She can dish it out, but I don’t think she likes to have it thrown back in her face.”
“No surprise there,” Vicky said. “Commander, can you get me a secure landline to Admiral von Mittleburg?”
A screen blinked. The admiral was already looking at Vicky.
“Did that go as well as you hoped?” he asked her.
“About as well as I could expect. We countered her claim to have an order from the Emperor. I got an offer out to all her ships, assuming everyone was monitoring that channel.”
“I think you can count on that. From my check of our own ships, just about every comm unit was turned to you two’s slow tête-à-tête.”
“So. What do we do now?”
“What we’ve been doing,” Admiral von Mittleburg said. “Load every weapon your friend down on St. Petersburg can squeeze out of his fabs or reactors. Have the yard dial in every ship so that we can get every ounce of effort out of them when the battle comes. For you and me, that means waiting patiently and killing any snake that can’t be handled below our pay grade.”
Vicky allowed herself to worry her lower lip. “Can I say that I hate this?”
“You can, but I can’t help you.”
“You’ve done more than anyone could have expected of an admiral in these trying times,” Vicky told him.