A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (35 page)

A figure appeared beside Rinharte, startling her from her reverie. It was Kordelasz. She smiled guiltily at him. He ignored her faint embarrassment and said, “We’re calling the attack at one. That’s gives us another ninety minutes to get into position and around six hours of daylight to win the day.”

“Very good.” Rinharte felt unconnected from the events around her. This was not battle as she understood it, and she found it hard to take onboard the incipient death and destruction. The marine-captain’s enthusiasm only strengthened the likeness to an adventure.

“You’re staying here? With the major—sorry, army marshal?”

“I hadn’t given the matter much thought,” Rinharte admitted. “Would I be any use in the fighting?”

“You’re an officer, Rizbeka,” pointed out Kordelasz. It was explanation enough.

“What about you? I expect you volunteered to spike the enemy’s field-pieces.”

Kordelasz grinned boyishly. “Close. Najib has something much more daring planned.”

“Oh?”

“He’s going to send up a dozen boats on high-speed parabolic trajectories that’ll bring them down in the middle of the enemy. Each one will be packed to the gills with marines. We’ll take them from the middle.”

“Ah yes. It was mentioned earlier.” It was the sort of audacious madness for which Najib was known. It was also the sort of tactic which could throw the battle in the Admiral’s favour… or lose it entirely as each boat crashed and burned after coming under fire.

“Why don’t you come with us?” Kordelasz asked. “We’ll be in the thick of it, you know.”

“I would be more hindrance than help, Garrin. I have no talent for land war.”

“You fought at Linna,” Kordelasz pointed out.

“A handful of platoons. You can’t compare that with
this
.”

“You’d be surprised. That fight on Linna makes you more experienced than some of the troops we’re fielding today. Against battalions detached from the Imperial Army Abroad.”

In other words, the enemy’s forces were veterans and many of Skaria’s troopers had never seen combat before. It was not an encouraging thought.

“Is it just me, Garrin, or is our chance of victory so slim as to be almost non-existent?”

He grinned wolfishly. “Oh, it’s slim, Rizbeka. No doubting that. But we don’t have to win the battle to win the war. The Admiral is busy doing that above us. Without troop-transports, the Serpent’s army is trapped here on the ground.”

“So why are we fighting?”

“Because they’ve given us the opportunity to do so. And because it wouldn’t be a victory otherwise.”

For Rinharte, it was not enough justification. “You go with your marines, Garrin,” she told him. “I’ll attach myself to the army marshal’s staff. Perhaps I can be of use.”

“You’ll miss all the excitement,” Kordelasz admonished.

“You’re incorrigible, Garrin.”

After climbing six decks up the conning-tower, the Admiral was surprised to find the gallery deserted. She looked up to the next deck, the Station Keeping Platform, but that too was empty. The hatch to the Flag Bridge, on the other side of the well, was shut. Lieutenant Gogos had been adamant Ormuz could be found up here. So that was where he must be.

She gestured for her escort to remain on the gallery, rounded the well and pushed open the Flag Bridge’s hatch. She saw Ormuz standing at the forward bulkhead, gazing out through a scuttle. She had been given running reports of his progress through
Kantara
and then—unbelievably!—into
Empress Glorina
, the enemy flagship. Instead of the battered hulk she had expected to lead limping from the battle, she now had one of the largest battleships in the Imperial Navy.

He must have heard her as she stepped over the coaming, for he turned round as she entered. “Flavia,” he said; and there was a level of familiarity in his voice she had not heard before. There was warmth in it too—enough to cause emotions from years past to threaten to resurface.

She focused on her gratitude. That, at least, she owed to Casimir Ormuz, and not the man from whom he had been cloned. “I am… impressed,” she admitted. “You have done well.”

His jacket was black with dried blood, and red caked his wrists and the backs of his hands. But he did not appear wounded. For that she was glad. More than she had expected.

Once she had reached him, she took both his hands in hers. She felt the flaking blood on his skin. “You have put us in the history books, Casimir,” she said.

“Put
you
,” he answered. “They’re already calling it the Admiral’s Patented Boarding Bridge. You won this battle, Flavia.”

She dropped his hands and turned away to look about the chamber. She did not recall ever visiting aboard
Empress Glorina
. Their paths had not crossed. The Flag Bridge was a small enclosed space, no more than fifteen feet by ten feet, and narrower at the forward end than at the rear. Burnished wooden decking; and a brass hand-rail, polished to a golden sheen, beneath the scuttles on forward, port and starboard walls of grey steel. A battle-consultnant, larger and more powerful than
Vengeful
’s, dominated the rear half of the room. A pair of communication-consoles sat against the aft bulkhead, either side of the hatch.

A thought occurred to her: “Where is Courland?” she asked.

He should be here to surrender, to acknowledge her victory.

“In the brig.”

The Admiral spun back and stared at Ormuz. “Explain yourself,” she snapped.

Ormuz shrugged. “He refused to give me his parole, so I had him thrown in the brig.”

This new-found confidence was annoying now—no, more than that:
improper
. How could he have treated Courland so rudely? “He is a Mishuan,” she said angrily. “The head of one of the first families —”

“I know who he is,” Ormuz interrupted. “He’s the commander of the Serpent’s fleet.”

She ignored him, strode across to the hatch and out onto the gallery. Leaning over the railing, she looked down the conning-tower well. Two decks below, she saw her executive officer climbing the ramp. “Mr Voyna,” she called.

He stopped and looked up.

She continued, “Have Admiral Courland released and brought to me here.”

He sketched a quick bow, turned about and hurried back down.

Her escort—a dozen of
Vengeful
’s most imposing rateds—stood at attention against the bulkhead. They were led by a midshipman, a short, stocky woman with wide shoulders and a wide flat face. “Ms Zoria, see if you can find out how many of my crew survived and are aboard
Empress Glorina
.”

Back on the Flag Bridge, she found Ormuz once again gazing out of a scuttle. He turned and beckoned her toward him. “I think you should see this,” he said.

She crossed to him and saw immediately what he had been watching.
Kantara
had fallen away from
Empress Glorina
, was now a mile or two distant. Depending from the cruiser like some parasitic creature hung
Vengeful
.

As they watched, the battlecruiser came apart. Something burst amidships, fountaining debris from her flank. Part of her superstructure hung as if balanced, and then slowly spun away. Gashes opened in her sides; more of the battlecruiser’s interior became visible. The hull began to fold and spindle. It was eerily silent. More holes peppered
Vengeful
. There was a bright flash. Debris expanded in a sphere as the battlecruiser ripped apart, taking
Kantara
with her.

The Admiral let out a deep sigh. “She served me well,” she said quietly. “I will miss her.”

“You have a better ship now,” Ormuz replied.

She looked up at him, surprised at his insensitivity.
Vengeful
had been
hers
. Her first command, her home. “It is not the same,” she said coldly.

He shrugged; and again she noted he no longer seemed so diffident in her presence. She had liked that caution—while he might resemble Ahasz, he had not behaved as him, and she had found the difference appealing.

“What happens now?” he asked.

“Now? We get this battleship in order. And there is still mopping up to be done.” She paused and turned to look at Geneza, that curved plain of turquoise beneath them. “And there is the battle down below to be won.” She smiled grimly. “But we will not celebrate our victory until we have lifted Ahasz’s siege of the Imperial Palace.”

Not until, she thought, I am before my father and he sees what I have done.

Rinharte lay on the ridge of the hill, Marine-Captain Najib beside her, and gazed at the battle below. The Imperial Skirmishers hidden amongst the copse in the bottom of the lea had temporarily halted the enemy advance. In squads of five, they had burst out of the trees and crashed into Gwupek’s troops. Now the enemy line was bunching about the Skirmishers.

The remainder of Skaria’s army ran down-slope towards the battle. Field-pieces across the valley fired bolts of directed-energy, which hit the earth with shattering booms and threw dirt yards into the air. Some of the shots hit troopers and blasted them messily apart.

Skaria had only a single battery of field-pieces from the Honourable Basilisk Company. These were too few to match the rate of fire of the enemy’s cannons, but they were causing some damage.

Six jolly boats full of Imperial Marines had hurtled overhead fifteen minutes ago. Nothing further had been heard of them.

“Are we winning?” Rinharte asked, unable to make sense of what she saw.

“Hard to say,” admitted Najib. “Our only objective is to break them, and I don’t see how we can do that unless Gwupek surrenders.”

“So we just kill each other until one of us decides we’ve had enough?”

“Something like that.”

Rinharte wished she had her telescope, but she’d broken it and left it behind aboard
Tempest
. The battle was a melee, a confusion of jackets in red, blue, grey, tan, yellow, green… Some she could identify. The yellow of the Imperial Provincial Foot, she knew only too well. The Imperial Grey Jackets she had seen at Skaria’s briefing. But all those blues and reds… Which were the Serpent’s, which fought for Major Skaria?

“At least we have the advantage,” Najib remarked.

“How so? There’s three times as many of them as there are us. And I understood the Serpent’s forces were veterans.”

“Ah yes, but see: Gwupek bunches his troops—he has to, he has so many. Ours are more spread out. Each of our cannon-shots kills more of ‘em. Can’t be good for their morale.”

Rinharte looked to left and right. “Couldn’t he send troops round to flank us?”

“We’d see ‘em.”

Najib was right. The vee-shaped valley stretched to either side in an unnaturally straight line. Perhaps it had not been a river, after all. It seemed too artificial a feature. A canal, thought Rinharte; or a road. Whatever it had been, it meant enemy troops would have to cross the valley to flank Skaria’s troops, and they would be clearly visible doing so.

Squads and platoons ran here and there, clashing against enemy troops. Knots of battling troopers swirled about the valley-floor. A thin pall of smoke, caused by burning earth from blasts by field-pieces, drifted across the battle-field, blurring detail.

“Time for another line,” Najib remarked. “Need to reinforce the troops in the field.” He turned to look at Rinharte. “We’re running short on officers. Want to take a platoon?”

Rinharte stared at the battle below in horror. Go amongst that? She was no coward but her courage was coloured with caution. True, survival in an engagement between two ships of the line was a matter of chance, and the end, when it came, was often quick. Rinharte had taken part in her fair share of naval battles. She had not escaped every one unscathed. Once she had almost lost a leg after falling debris had trapped her. She still had a scar on her abdomen, and a matching scar on her lower back, where a metal spur, broken free of a fitting, had impaled her.

She reached down and touched the hilt of her sword. She had no choice and she knew it. She had known something like this would happen once she found herself on the planet’s surface. As an officer, she could not stand idly by and watch troops die.

Her decision must have been written on her face. Najib said, “I’ll give you a platoon of Neuri’s Hussars. They’re good fighters.”

“And what am I to do?”

Najib scrambled back from the ridge and, once he was out of sight of the enemy, clambered to his feet, long arms and legs knocking. Rinharte crawled back to join him.

“We really need those field-pieces spiking,” the marine-captain said, slapping his thighs to remove the dirt. “Just pick yourself one and charge straight at it.”

“Does that tactic usually succeed?” asked Rinharte, thinking it great foolishness.

“No other way to do it,” Najib replied. He jerked into motion and began striding back to the encampment
·
“If they’re on their toes, they might take out a few of you. But those things can’t build up energy quickly between shots, so you should do fine.”

“Remind me,” Rinharte said, hurrying to catch up. She was as tall as Najib but he moved quickly. “Remind me how much experience you’ve had at this sort of fighting.”

“None,” he cheerfully admitted. “But it’s all very simple. Tactics is not an arcane science, you know.” He gestured vaguely. “You just need to know what you have to do and how you plan to do it.”

“If you’re that interested in tactics and stratagems, why in heavens did you join the marines?”

The marine-captain halted abruptly. He gazed up at the sky, brow furrowed. “I like ships too,” he said at length. He nodded, as if convincing himself of his answer.

Rinharte stood and watched him march away, and hoped Major Skaria knew exactly what he was doin
g.

Rinharte scrambled up the reverse slope of the hill to the ridge. Her platoon, six squads of troopers in dark blue jackets, came behind. She reached the crest and stopped a moment. Enemy troops were advancing up the slope from the valley bottom. She pulled out her sword, ready to order a charge.