The alarm interrupted Cor’s breakfast. The meal was the only time of the day she allowed herself to indulge her sweet tooth, and she glared at the communicator on the table in her quarters across the stack of waffles.
“What is it?” she demanded after swallowing.
“Commodore, we have a
massive
jump flare at the one light minute mark,” Lieutenant Trevor Hamilton,
Unchained Glory
‘s tactical officer, reported. “CIC is resolving further detail, but the Captain asked me to let you know.”
“How many ships?” Cor demanded.
“Unsure, ma’am,” the officer replied. “The flare was big enough to cause sensor interference. It’ll be a few minutes before we can resolve detail.”
“Any communications?”
“None yet. They may be blocked by the interference - I don’t think I’ve ever seen a jump flare of this size.”
The Mage-Commodore’s blood ran cold. A jump flare that large had to be at least an entire squadron of cruisers. There was
no
reason for that kind of force to come to Ardennes - unless they had some idea of just what had
actually
been going on.
She gave her waffles a sad look.
“Inform Captain Ishtar I’m on my way to the bridge,” she ordered. “Let me know
immediately
if anything changes.”
#
Mage-Commodore Cor strode onto the bridge of her flagship with a storm cloud on her heels. Her quarters were only slightly further away than the Captain’s, and there had been no time for anything to change before she made it from her uneaten breakfast to the central Simulacrum Chamber of the warship.
“We have a problem,” Mage-Captain Devi Ishtar told her bluntly, and gestured at the section of the screens surrounding them zoomed in on the emerging ships.
Cor may not have understood the imagery and scans used for aerial and ground combat, but she knew the iconography the
Unchained Glory
used to identify starships perfectly. It still took her a minute to identify just what was at the center of the five-ship formation now dropping towards Ardennes.
“That is a
battleship
,” she said aloud, her voice surprisingly calm.
“
Righteous Guardian of Liberty
,” Ishtar confirmed. “Accompanied by four
Honorific
class cruisers. Last reports have all five ships in the Tau Ceti system.”
“Have they communicated yet?” Cor asked. It was theoretically possible that they were here to refuel at the logistics base.
“Not yet… wait,” Ishtar stopped as the communications officer held up his hand. “We’ve got something?”
“Incoming from
Righteous Guardian
,” the officer confirmed. “I can forward it to your office?”
The battleship was still a full light minute away, ten hours travel to make a zero velocity intercept in orbit. Any message was a recording that could be played and replayed before responding.
Cor swallowed and glanced around the room. Everyone on the bridge had been there when they’d blown Karlsberg to hell. Everyone was in on the half-a-dozen dirty little deals she’d cut with Vaughn, and they’d all collected their own cuts of the ‘special compensation packages’.
There was nothing she could hide from them.
“No,” she answered slowly. “Put it on the screens.”
The bridge of a warship was also its Simulacrum Chamber, centered on the small silver model that, magically at least,
was
the ship. All of its walls were covered with screens, with the bridge crew working on platforms suspended in the middle of the pyramid-shaped room.
A window opened on the screens ahead of them all, resolving into a familiar woman in the navy blue uniform of the Royal Martian Navy, and the same golden circle on her collar as Cor.
“Mage-Commodore Adrianna Cor, this is Mage-Commodore Jane Adamant aboard the
Righteous Guardian of Liberty
,” the woman introduced herself. She would have known Cor would recognize her, but she was speaking for the record. Cor knew the tone.
“It is my duty to inform you that charges of the most grievous nature have been laid against you,” she continued. “You stand accused of mass murder and grand treason. My orders from His Majesty are to take you into custody.
“You
will
stand down your ships. All of your vessels must power down their weapons and evacuate their Simulacrum Chambers.
“You have one hour to comply, or I will use whatever force is necessary to bring you in.”
The transmission ended, and Cor stared at the screen, now showing the stylized rocket-and-red-planet logo of the Royal Martian Navy. The bridge was silent around her, and she realized
everyone
was looking at her.
“Ma’am,” Captain Ishtar asked, her voice soft and slow. “What do we
do
?”
She swallowed and spoke as calmly as she was able.
“First, I think I need to talk to Governor Vaughn.”
#
“What do you mean, there’s a
battleship in my system
?” Mage-Governor Michael Vaughn demanded of the crew in the main command center. “Where did it come from?”
“IFF identifies it as the
Righteous Guardian of Liberty
, sir,” Captain Duval reported. “Last Royal Navy listing we received reported it as being in Tau Ceti, preparing for a refit.”
The newly promoted Captain swallowed hard as his Governor rounded on him.
“The cruisers are also from Tau Ceti,” he said quietly. “All of them should be part of Mage-Admiral Segal’s Tau Ceti Station.”
“Why the hell are they
here
?”
“There was a transmission to Mage-Commodore Cor,” Duval reported. “It was under a Navy encryption; we can crack it but it will take us some time.”
“Fuck that,” Vaughn snapped. “Get Cor on the private line in my office -
now
. And someone get Montoya - ASAP.”
“He’s in the Center,” Duval confirmed quickly. “I’ll have him join you in your office.” The officer paused. “Mage-Commodore Cor has just opened a channel. She’s requesting to speak with you in private.”
“Connect it to my office,” the Mage-Governor of Ardennes snapped. He left Duval, currently the shift commander, standing awkwardly at the edge of the command center’s central pit.
Slamming his door behind him, Vaughn crossed the underground conference room he’d commandeered and hit the ‘accept’ key on his personal computer. The main wallscreen lit up with the image of Cor’s personal office, a plate of waffles at the Commodore’s elbow and a fork descending from her mouth as she swallowed.
“Governor Vaughn,” she greeted him.
“Commodore Cor,” he replied. “Would you mind telling me what the
hell
is going on?”
“I was planning on asking you the same thing,” she said sharply. “You’ve noticed our new friends.”
“Yes. I’m told they’ve communicated with you.”
“They have,” she confirmed. “Their commander is a Mage-Commodore Adamant - an old ‘friend’ of mine who has to be giggling in her shoes.
“I’ve been charged with mass murder and treason. They know, Michael. If they know enough to lay those charges on me, they know enough to hang you next to me.
“I
know
none of Stealey’s people made it out of this system, Vaughn,” she told him. “So tell me, how the
hell
do they know?”
Vaughn cursed as he remembered Montoya’s fit of paranoia.
“It’s…
possible
,” he admitted, “that someone got access to the transceiver array. We had nothing confirmed,” he pointed out, “but it’s possible.”
“I’d say it’s
probable
, Michael,” she snapped. “And now it’s come home to roost. That battleship is going to settle into orbit and its Marines are going to arrest us both. They’ll haul us back to Mars, give us a perfectly fair trial, and
shoot us
.”
“Everything I have done was for Ardennes,” Vaughn said stiffly. Much of what he’d done could be argued as criminal, but he was
the Governor
. It had been necessary.
“Martian courts won’t care, Michael,” Cor said softly, almost gently.
“I feel like we’re missing something,” he said after a moment. “A Hand falls, another rises…”
“What?” the Commodore looked at him like he was crazy.
“There’s no Hand on Ardennes, Adrianna,” he told her. “A Mage-Commodore with a warrant can arrest
you
, but she doesn’t have the authority to arrest me. They need a Hand for that, and Stealey’s dead.”
The door behind him opened and closed and he glanced back to see Montoya enter the room. He gestured the General to a chair and turned back to Cor.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said with a shake of his head. “This Adamant needs to make orbit before she can do anything. What is your plan, Mage-Commodore?”
Cor paused for a long moment, her eyes falling to the half-eaten stack of waffles on her table. With a convulsive motion, she threw the entire plate into the garbage and looked back up to meet his gaze evenly.
“I intend to fight,” she said flatly. “Adamant has us out-massed, but I have her outnumbered, and I have years more experience in squadron command than she has.
“What I need from
you
is the ASDF,” she continued. “I want you to put Admiral Martine under my command. With those destroyers, we stand a chance!”
Vaughn considered. Admiral Delia Martine commanded the fifteen Tau Ceti-built destroyers of the Ardennes System Defense Force. They were modern, capable ships, if a generation behind the Navy by Protectorate law. They’d been expensive as hell, but now they looked to be worth every penny.
“Done,” he promised. “I will advise Admiral Martine immediately.” He paused. “Don’t fail me, Adrianna,” he told her. “We can still get out of this.”
The Mage-Commodore smiled thinly. “You mean
I
can still get us out of this,” she told him. “We’ll see what happens.”
#
“They’re here!”
The bellow that echoed across the main landing pad in the Freedom Wing’s hidden airbase drew everyone’s attention. They had a small ‘sensor’ station set up on one side of the cavern, though its data actually came from a hack into the planetary defense network.
The operator, who had been keeping an eye on the orbital scanners and watching for the Navy to arrive, was standing and pointing at the screen. A few keystrokes activated a hidden projector and threw the sensor return up on the smooth stone wall, highlighting the five signatures of the newly arrived Navy task force.
Damien whistled as he interpreted the data signatures. He’d suspected that Alexander would send Adamant and the
Righteous Guardian
, but it was still amazing to
see
that half-kilometer pyramid slicing through space.
The shorter and narrower spikes of the cruisers next to her were a welcome sight as well. His King had pulled out all of the stops - five ships might seem a bare handful against the twenty-one already in orbit, but there were only twelve battleships in the entirety of human space.
He watched, bemused, as everyone dropped what they were doing and started scrambling for preparation. A moment later, Brute - the pilot already half-into his flight-suit - stopped next to him in confusion.
“Shouldn’t we be getting ready?”
“They’re still ten hours out,” Damien reminded him quietly. Glancing around, he realized that if he didn’t put a hold on things, the Wing was going to fire off the operation with Cor still in orbit. That wasn’t going to help anyone.
“Everybody calm down,” he bellowed, loud enough for everyone to hear him, then hopped up on a box so they could all see him.
“That’s Mage-Captain Adamant and the battleship
Righteous Guardian of Liberty
,” he announced so everyone could hear him. “I promised you justice - I promised you Mars would come - and we sent our best. That is
fifty million tons
of long-overdue justice.
“
But
,” he continued, “she’s still a full light minute -
eighteen million kilometers
- away. It’ll take the
Guardian
a little over ten hours to close that distance, and she won’t maneuver faster than that unless something goes
damn
wrong down here.
“So,
breathe
,” the Hand ordered. “Adamant will deal with Cor. It will fall to us to deal with Vaughn, but we won’t do anyone any favors by rushing. Check and double check
everything
. We move into Nouveaux Versailles in six hours.
“Then our dear Governor Vaughn will learn the punishment for his many, many crimes.”