It took him back, but Emmerich knew better than to be seduced by the warm, comfortable confines of Firehawk’s flag bridge. Amsel, the old Blackbird now replaced with a Paladin-class version of the same name, had been close enough to this ship to be identical, in all the ways that mattered.
The place where he had first made his name as The Red Admiral, scourge of the spaceways.
Now he was busy trying to save the Empire from rogues, spies, and fools.
There were days he wanted to damn Jessica Keller for what she had done to undermine his entire existence. Or thank her for helping him find himself when he had gone astray.
And today, he needed her brilliance to save the galaxy.
It would have been galling, had it been anyone other than Jessica.
As both Joh and Casey had observed, empires could be built on the broad shoulders of a woman like that.
Em was going to bet everything that they were right.
Around him, the flag bridge was quiet. Almost sepulchral.
The radio silence was as complete as he could get it, routing all necessary communications with Aquitaine and Nils Kasum through four fast frigates whose captains he had personally trained and installed. Not even the Imperial Post could be trusted right now, to say nothing of the Imperial Security Bureau that had been so badly compromised by Dittmar and his accomplices.
Hopefully, enough of the Fleet was solid behind him.
If not, they were all doomed to live out their wretched lives as slaves of the great machine-god.
Over my dead body…
Em fought the anger down and drew a deep breath. Let the oxygen burn out the impurities in his soul so he could face battle with a clear mind.
Lady Moirrey always had a perfect quote for any serious occasion, drawn from one of the ancients, preserved down the millennia and translated time and again as generations passed. One had struck Em’s fancy and seemed to call to him now.
“From this day to the ending of the world,” said Henry 5 of the religious Feast of the Saint Crispian.
“But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition.”
Em looked once around the entirety of the spacious flag bridge, finally settling his gaze on Lt. Commander Tifft after counting the seventeen others on duty.
Gunter would do.
They all would, but this man stood solid as a mountain, which had been something of a godsend to Em. He was out here in the field without Hendrik or his usual staff for the first time in ages, the needs of secrecy being what they were.
Em smiled and watched the man loosen up a notch. Perhaps only granite now.
Another set of broad shoulders upon which to build empires.
“Status?” Em asked simply.
Tifft had managed to assimilate the needs of the Grand Admiral faster than any aide he had ever broken in. He might be keeping the boy when he left, rather than letting Tifft’s career stagnate on an older battleship soon to be relegated to safe borders and internal patrols.
Even Nils Kasum had once made that mistake, though he had fixed it later by handing Jessica a mighty sword named Auberon.
When did you become so apocalyptic, old man?
“Per Admiral Provst, we are running as dark and quiet as possible, while still under power and with minimal engines, sir,” Tifft replied quietly. “All emitters are off or powered to the lowest possible setting. Passive sensors only. We are currently spinward and a distance outbound from the point of rendezvous delineated Intersection Point Kasum, where we are expecting to meet up with the Aquitaine squadron at any time. All weapons are primed and inspected, and then locked down for your orders, or Provst’s as next in flag command.”
Em nodded. Nothing new, but precise. Concise. Exactly what Em needed, and nothing more. Nothing confusing. Yes, this boy was being wasted as a logistics officer.
“Grand Admiral, signal from the bridge,” a voice called.
Tifft turned, then caught himself, and looked to his commander with a calm face. It was Tifft’s job to handle all that communications traffic. But he was also smart enough to know when to step out of the way.
Like now.
“Go ahead,” Em ordered loudly to the back of whichever head had spoken.
“Provst here, Grand Admiral,” the Admiral of the White said.
Em had absconded with the man’s flag bridge, and his command. Provst had retaliated by inserting himself as a secondary bridge officer, sitting watches and leaving the space below for Em, while Kistler continued to act like a proper captain.
Only a man who had been one of Em’s captains for a decade would be willing to do that. Any other admirals probably would have been here in the room, waiting on him hand and foot.
Another sign of a good crew.
“Tom,” Em replied.
“We’re picking up a strange, intermittent signal, Admiral,” Provst said. “Roughly one hundred ten degrees ahead of us around the rim of the target orbit. About the same amount spinward and as far in as we are out. No transponder and no sensor ping, but there is a high probability that it is artificial.”
“Is it in effective Primary range?” Em asked.
There was nothing more surprising than being hammered with Primaries out of the darkness. He could speak to that with great authority, especially after how zu Kermode first introduced herself to him, long ago at Qui-Ping.
“Extreme long-range, Admiral,” Provst said. “Iffy at best.”
Meaning: we could hit them, but it probably wouldn’t be significant enough to matter, other than to let someone out there know they weren’t alone.
Still, if bad people were hiding in the shadows, they might not have arrived soon enough to spot Firehawk dropping out of JumpSpace, and were therefore still expecting a low-profile courier.
An unarmed one.
“Let’s go rattle some cages, Tifft,” Em said in a low murmur and a feral grimace.
The wicked smile that came over the young man’s face just further endeared him to Em.
Tifft reached down and keyed a button on the map projection counter between them.
“All hands to stations,” the man called in a large voice. “Prepare for maneuver and engagement. Bridge, stand by for combat orders.”
A light went red and a small sound ground up. In other parts of the ship, the alert was guaranteed to wake a crew man from a dead sleep.
Both Admiral Provst’s and Captain Kistler’s faces appeared on display readouts. Presumably, they were going to work this as a team, rather than adhering to the old Imperial model. Briefly, Em wondered if the Aquitaine innovation, having a dedicated Tactical Officer in charge of fighting, with the commander overseeing everything else, would pan out here. Provst and Kistler were probably the two best men to put it to use, having both served on Em’s battleship at various times.
Em fixed his steady eye on the two images.
“Tom. Albert. Swing our butt around until we’re pointed close enough,” Em said. “Bonus points if we can figure out which way he’ll run and manage to cross his “T” with our intercept. Primaries only, on my command. First, all ahead full and bring all shields on-line once we have the vector. Questions?”
Both men shook their heads and looked down to start working out solutions on their own consoles. Tifft appeared as if he wanted to say something. Em nodded to him.
“Assault teams ready to board, just in case we score a disabling hit?” the man asked carefully.
From the look in his eyes and the tone of his voice, Tifft understood what a low probability that was, but it was still above zero, and thus worth considering. And better to have the men ready and not need them, than to waste ten minutes getting the crews armoured and ready to go, only to let a wounded duck flee. Or bite.
“Do it,” Em ordered as he turned his gaze onto the big projection of near space.
You will discover, my friend, that you have a tiger by the tail, and not a mouse.
A dozen other men came on duty at a run in response to the alert. Em didn’t need such a big crew, since they were out here without a battleship’s normal compliment of frigates and cruisers as escorts, but a good crew does what they were trained to do immediately, and then figures out how to go beyond that.
After all, Em had never deputized an armed freighter and taken his flag aboard it during an emergency evacuation of a station suffering a critical failure. As far as he knew, they still had a tiny Imperial flag hand-painted on the seedy bridge of that little ship, from when they had commanded a chunk of the Imperial fleet for a few hours.
Minutes passed like a glacier melting, rather than sands racing through a glass. Tifft intercepted most of the traffic headed his way, just as Hendrik always had.
Em stared at the slowly-growing image of whatever was out there beeping. It could be anything, which was part of the reason he was going to engage it from as far away as possible. Explosives in a mine or missiles suddenly accelerating would be distant enough to deal with. And nobody would set a captor mine to fire a primary at this range.
Hopefully, whoever it was would be paying attention to the middle of the circle where Jessica was slated to appear, sometime today, and not to a dark spot possibly occluding distant stars as Firehawk swooped.
“Confirmed, Admiral,” Tifft said, looking up from whatever screen had his attention. “Artificial transmissions on a strange frequency. Apparently encoded and exhibiting a strange linguistic cadence.”
That last brought Em’s face around to stare quizzically at the man.
Tifft’s face flushed for a second, expecting the sharp edge of the Admiral’s temper. When none was forthcoming, he relaxed.
“Military transmissions tend to be staccato, sir,” Tifft tried to explain. “The minimum and no more. Even in Arabic or Spanish, which both tend to be smoother languages. This is a fairly constant signal, and it appears and disappears on a regular pattern.”
Tifft’s eyes grew clouded. His brow knit and he suddenly looked down, furiously typing and clicking.
Em waited, able to recognize a man deep in proving a suspicion. Or disproving it.
Tifft looked up, still concerned, but more puzzled.
“Bridge,” he called. “Range and bearing on target?”
“No change,” Provst replied, apparently acting as Tactical while Kistler flew the ship. “Acceptable firing range now. Optimum in twelve minutes.”
Tifft’s face grew angry.
“Speak, Commander,” Em said. “I’d rather have all options on the table.”
Tifft nodded, almost grinding his teeth.
“I have an image in my head of a low-powered transmitter, Admiral,” he replied quietly. “On the face of a slowly-tumbling asteroid. The breaks might be us falling below the rotational terminus, and then rising again twenty-seven minutes later, while it transmits a constant signal. Imagine a radio mast on automatic, playing music.”
“Why?”
Tifft shrugged, unwilling to commit further.
It was Em’s turn to look puzzled, but he had asked.
And it fit the profile better than a stealthy frigate or small pirate boat laying in wait.
One way to be sure.
“Sensors, this is the Flag Bridge,” Em ordered loudly. “Ping the target hard once. Gunnery, prepare to fire, on my order only.”
Acknowledgements echoed.
A ring of ripples appeared on the command board, racing outwards, striking the target, and bouncing back. Computer programs washed out the noise and displayed an image.
From a distance, with his eyes squinted and his head turned a little, it might be mistaken for a frigate, being longer than it was tall, and somewhat organic looking. Cargo carriers tended to be more boxy, if only for efficient use of space.
But it was definitely a rock, tumbling slowly through space like a bent finger.
“All hands, secure from general quarters,” Em ordered a moment later. “That appears to be a lone asteroid.”
Tifft was grinning. Em joined him.
Provst’s voice broke in.
“I’m pretty sure we can take him, Grand Admiral,” he said in a voice barely containing the laughter.
“I’ll let you know if I change my mind, Tom,” Em replied.
“Alert,” another voice suddenly called out sharply. “New target just appeared out of JumpSpace. Stand by for transponder.”
“Belay the order to stand down,” Em called. It would save a few minutes for him to make the change, rather than routing it properly. Things might be risky again.
Butts stayed glued to chairs. Fingers were poised to unleash all the hell a modern battleship had on call.
“Target identifies as CA-264,” the man said a moment later.
“CA-264?” Em queried aloud. “Are you sure it’s not CR?”
“Affirmative, Admiral,” the sensors officer confirmed. “CA. And…blood and martyrs!”
“What?”
“Sorry, sir. New target on same bearing,” the call came. “Size registers her as a cruiser, but she’s broadcasting a higher power curve than we are. Stand by. Transponder identifies her as RAN VI Victrix. We’re being hailed.”
“All guns track on 6 Victrix,” Em ordered the room. “Ignore the escort for now. Route the call here. Tom, Albert, listen in.”
Em turned to a different screen and waited for the message to appear.
“This is RAN VI Victrix,” a familiar, intense face appeared on the screen, the voice hard and heavy. “You are in a secured zone.”
Impressive. Dominant. Fierce.
Short, dark hair coming in gray in most places these days. Clean shaven. Dark, green eyes that seemed to signal a black fire, deep within. Lines that might have been etched with a chisel and a sledgehammer.
Alber’ d’Maine was a warrior to the bone.
And if that was Kigali accompanying him in a new hull, the two of them probably could have seriously damaged Firehawk, had this been an accidental meeting during the now-concluded war.
Especially those two.
“This is IFV Feuerfalke,” Em replied in a bored, aristocratic tone. “Grand Admiral Emmerich Wachturm commanding. You’re in my space, d’Maine. Nice of you to finally join us.”
That got a savage smile from the man.
“Good to see you again, Grand Admiral,” Jessica’s mighty sword hand said. “First Expeditionary reporting for duty. Fleet Centurion is right behind us with the rest of the team.”
“Good,” Em noted. “What the hell are you flying?”
“You told Bedrov to design a better blade,” d’Maine said with a tone approaching glee. “VI Victrix and VI Ferrata are unlike anything anyone has ever seen. II Augusta is even worse.”
Em had spent some time around the man, years ago, during the events concerning Corynthe that culminated in Jessica saving an allied crown by taking it herself. Another time he had badly underestimated the woman.
If Alber’ d’Maine drew that much happiness from a ship, any ship, it must be something revolutionary. And dangerous. Em had read the reports from Thuringwell. Had personally watched how far d’Maine and his crew were willing to push the margins of survivability at Ballard.
The ancient term berserker had been originally invented to describe the likes of Alber’ d’Maine.
“Acknowledged,” Em said. “Find yourself a defensive parking orbit and we’ll come to rest nearby. I’ve been flying blind on the off-chance someone else was going to be here, so we have velocity to kill. And I want to scan the area.”
“Roger that.”
And he was gone.
Em knew better than to be offended. He had given the man an order and d’Maine was executing it. Without any jockeying or dominance games.
Just another reason he had asked Joh to authorize letting Keller in on their darkest secrets and asking for her help solving them.
“Sensors Officer,” Em ordered loudly, causing every head to bob, albeit unconsciously. “Pulse the system hard enough that you can count the comets. Find me anything and everything that does not belong, so we can decide if we have to kill something.”
He turned to Tifft with a wry smile.
“And since we have the assault team ready, go ahead and have Tom capture that rock, whatever that is, so you can satisfy my curiosity. I’m going to eat an early dinner and have a nap so we can stay up well past our bedtimes meeting with Keller. You do the same.”
Em turned at Tifft’s nod and headed for the hatch.
Keller was here, finally, and had apparently brought a revolution with her.
Another revolution.
But this one, he got to drop on someone else.
Em smiled wickedly as he exited the room.