Darkness.
Space was technically completely empty, when you measured all space consumed by mass, as a percentage of the overall whole.
Humanity was a rounding error on the cosmos, when you multiplied the resulting space by all of time.
Arott grinned internally. As always, he quartered his private, philosophical thoughts away from the group surrounding him. Wouldn’t do to ruin their perceptions of him as a boring person, especially at this late date.
In the years since he had met Jessica and this team that he had become a part of, Arott knew he had developed a reputation as a by-the-rules stickler for detail. And, compared to the rest of these lovable maniacs, that was certainly the case.
But he had found something about himself after First Ballard. Or rather, during the battle, watching Alber d’Maine go into full-berserker mode, and Tomas Kigali saunter through the valley of death as though going for High Tea.
They were not men known for deep introspection. Most of Jessica’s people really weren’t. They were warriors. For most of them, they had achieved their highest dream in life on the day they added that third stripe permanently and became Command Centurions.
Arott had felt the same way, once. Before a very private conversation with the old First Lord, Nils Kasum, about what place Arott wanted for himself.
Now, he wanted to shape the future itself. In small ways.
Jessica was going to go down in the history books as one of the most important people of this century, and possibly many in either direction, but that was Jessica Keller. The woman was just as impressive as the myth. Perhaps more so, when you knew her and knew how much of what she did was based on her personal vision of what was right.
Arott didn’t always agree with her. Didn’t always even understand her, but he suspected that nobody did. Perhaps not even Keller herself.
She sat at the far end of the long conference table from him, in the room he had taken as his, her warriors around them on both sides, poised like lesser hawks before the majestic phoenix. He would be moving out of this room, off this ship, all too soon. This was probably the second to last of these meetings, there remaining only the formal one that would send him on his mission.
The one where she would rely on him to maintain her entire logistics train for a galactic war, with nothing more than vague notions of what she was going to be doing next.
First Ballard, all over again. He missed Stralsund, now in Doyle MacEoghain’s capable hands, but wouldn’t have traded with the man.
Endings. And beginnings.
Just for effect, and to maintain his reputation, Arott picked up the stack of printouts and tapped them into perfect squareness on the tabletop, before setting them back down and turning to look at Senior Centurion Bhattacharya, seated midway down on his left. Her report had been as detailed as he could have possibly wanted, over and above what zu Kermode had produced.
“Initial consensus,” he said to start the meeting, aware that he had everyone’s eyes focused. “The station we explored is fully automated. Knowing what little we do about Buran, the planetary outpost will probably have a shockingly small human footprint, mostly as supervisors and technicians, while an automated, robotic workforce handles most of the labor.”
He paused and glanced down. Mostly for effect, since he had memorized all the key details already.
“The station exists only as a refueling and transshipment point, we think,” Arott gave voice to the opinion of the men and women on his staff who were paid to think about these things. “This system sits astride one of the laterals from whichever one they use as a navigation corridor. Ships cross the gulf, then fan out. This planet exists to provide a ready supply of good steel and other metals, which are then stored in plate, bar, or tube form, as needed. The water can be consumed as-is or broken down into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to make other things, as needed. They don’t have anything like Mendocino or Duncan, that Fribourg has ever detected, and so must use this method instead.”
Arott nodded to Command Centurions Ihejirika and Kovack, masters of the two ships that brought fresh supplies forward from staging bases and kept the warships in food and weapons.
Normally, an operation like this, with this many vessels, would require four or perhaps five such Fleet Replenishment freighters to sustain, but Bedrov had done such an amazing job of design that they would probably have to send Andorra home for more fighters, pilots, and spare parts before anything else was depleted.
“Do we take the planet?” Jessica asked in a formal tone.
They had already chatted briefly, but this was for the benefit of everyone else.
“We do not,” Arott replied. “It would give away too much of our plans at this point. But we should consider doing something similar, if we can find a good planet with either a primitive population, or none at all. I would go farther, though, and also bring in farmers to plant crops. Having a source of grains and vegetables close at hand would help with my logistics, especially as far as we are from any currently-friendly worlds.”
“Later?” d’Maine asked, his eyes glowing with that internal fire that drove the man.
“Later, we absolutely use Jessica’s overall strategy to destroy as many of these orbital outposts as we can,” Arott replied, letting his gaze roam around the room until he found the face he wanted. “CP-406 was designed with exactly this sort of mission in mind. It’s not worth the effort to root them out on the ground, but uninhabited, unarmed stations are easily destroyed and will materially impact Buran’s operations, if he has been relying on them to maintain his reach by providing generic consumables.”
“We’ll come back and blow this one shortly, then,” Jessica said, turning to Navin, standing along the wall. “And drop the battalion to disable the ground facilities, depending. As near as I can tell, this would be their primary supply depot on the path to my destination. Let’s put some burning barricades in the streets.”
The Command Security Centurion nodded sagely, eyes a-twinkle at the prospect. Arott knew how upset Navin had been that he couldn’t go with the team to take the station. Leading a ground invasion would assuage the man, especially as close as he was to retirement.
Jessica cleared her throat to draw all eyes to her. It was time.
“I have not shared any details with anybody but Arott to this point,” she began. “Partly, that was for operational security, because we still had to deal with Imperial spies and moles. The Grand Admiral doesn’t know what we’re doing next, because I wasn’t sure myself until we got to this point.”
She paused to take a sip of coffee. From where he sat, Arott could even see the flash of determination appear in her eyes, however briefly. It was like a pulsar, strobing one impossibly-hot light and then passing back to darkness. He couldn’t remember ever seeing it like that. Not Jessica. Others, perhaps. The mere mortals, but never the legend herself.
He wasn’t sure if that knowledge made him stronger, or more concerned. Her next words brought him solace.
“All of you know our past at this point,” she continued. “2218 Svati Prime. Petron. Ballard. Thuringwell. We’re going to take everything we have learned and take it to Buran. Everything I have read or heard suggests that Buran is a colonizer, not a conqueror. They will seed worlds on this side of the gulf with a generational timeline, because this being has been alive for thousands of years, and plans to be so for millennia more. It has begun to think of itself as a god. Our god, if we would just roll over and accept his godhead.”
The fire was back. Hot and angry. This was the woman that had led them into the fury of Ballard. He remembered the same tones.
“I will not,” she growled. “We are flawed, unpredictable creatures, prone to fancy and stupidity, but we are free. What we are about to begin here is nothing less than the liberation of all humanity from the last of the old gods. We do not need them. We will not accept them. We must be free. Questions?”
Interestingly, it was Kigali who asked. Arott would have expected the man to have his own telepathic link to Jessica after this many years and battles. Perhaps he was speaking for the other corvette commanders, all relative newcomers to this force, but every one of them forged and sharp.
“What about the colonists?” he asked in a deceptively gentle voice, running one hand back through the slowly-graying blond hair that was still too long for most interpretations of regulations.
“Most of them are likely to be just normal people when we get there,” Jessica replied. “Citizens of Thuringwell, even if none will understand that reference. We’ll destroy any organized military and internal security capacity as we go, watch the gendarmes closely on any planet we take, and leave the rest in as much peace as they want to accept. Imperial traders will come soon enough, and I suspect that a few enterprising merchants from the Republic are also doing the math, to say nothing of people like Galen Estevan.”
That got a chuckle out of the room. Estevan, the son-in-law of Jessica’s Comptroller of the Court, Uly Larionov, had accompanied her to St. Legier two years ago in a tiny one-ring mothership dedicated to commerce, making an absolute killing in trade across what was then a tremendous distance.
“Let me make one last point clear,” Jessica concluded. “We’re making war on a god. I’ve met one in my life, a woman who thought of herself as the Last of the Immortals, although she was not. She was still six thousand years old. Keep that in mind. These things are ancient, but, according to her, only machines. They have no magical powers save patience and knowledge. They can outlive all of us. They can be beat, if there exists the will. Fribourg will be along to help us in another year, but Emmerich Wachturm thought that even one year was too long to wait, and that Buran would become fully embedded on this side of the gulf if he waited. In another year, I plan to be on the other side of that gulf and taking the war to them.”