Queen of the Pirates (20 page)

“They asked
Aquitaine
for help. I came.” Jessica realized that she was tapping the table–top for emphasis as she spoke. At least she had learned that trick from the First Lord, one of many useful things he had taught her over the years.

Almost as a mirror, both Arnulf and his chancellor leaned forward to put their elbows on the table. She suppressed a smile as the two men flinched at each other.

“No,” King Arnulf said forcefully. “Why are
you
here?”

Jessica leaned forward again. It created an element of intimacy in the conversation, rather than the sort of righteous grandstanding other Republic officers might employ. She could imagine some of them, right here, right now, doing just that. “That base is ended,” she said flatly. “
Lincolnshire
is willing to consider a war over it.
Aquitaine
is willing to back them.”

“And you?” he said. Not rude, but hard and short. This was a man used to command. Being in command. Pride in being tougher, better, meaner. Being the King of the Pirates.

She lowered her voice to a level almost better suited for pillow talk, not that she had had any experience in such a thing. But she had read enough books.

“I consider the matter closed,” she said, barely above a whisper. “I would have annihilated
Warlock
and his people on the surface. If they come back, I will.”

“
Corynthe
has no treaty with
Aquitaine
,” the king murmured back. “No common border.”

“No,” she agreed, “but
Lincolnshire
does.” She let the thought dangle. Diplomacy, as the Premier had said, was the art of the unsaid, as much as the said. Bluff and bluster were fine in combat. Here, she needed a touch of ambiguity.

Really, it was just like fighting her combat robot, right? She could do this.

“And you come here?” he said, leaning back and his voice starting to work itself back up to a good towering rage. That was probably a sign of success, rather than failure. “And you would threaten me in my own Court?”

The eyes gave him away. They were still too calculating for the anger in the voice. This man would have made an amazing senator, had he been born on
Ladaux
or
Anameleck Prime
. Jessica was glad she didn’t have to deal with him on a regular basis. She could see how he became king.

“No,” she said, voice even a shade quieter.

He had to lean in again to hear her.

“A threat suggests that I’m not serious, Arnulf, King of the Pirates,” she continued. “Consider this a promise.”

She leaned back and sized up the rest of the room. The looks she got back were surprise, disdain, and in a two cases, outright lust. Apparently, no woman talked to a man that way here. Something else she would have to consider changing if she had to come back.

The king’s laughter was jarring, considering the situation.

The chancellor had just decided to do or say something when he was interrupted. He blinked in surprise and held his counsel.

“Are you sure you are not interested in a marriage contract, Keller?” the king boomed. “You are an amazingly–rare woman.”

The men around her evinced shock, bordering on apoplexy at the thought.
Jessica Keller, Queen of the Pirates? Please.

She cocked an eyebrow at him, but remained silent. Very definitely a moment to allow the unsaid to speak. Who knew how serious this crazy barbarian king might be? And he was most certainly not her type.

Still, she seemed to have found an opening in his bluster. She smiled at his continuing laughter, a joke among warriors, unshared by the common folk.

“Du,” he said suddenly, clapping his chancellor hard on the shoulder and nearly knocking the smaller man out of the chair, “let us have a proper banquet to welcome our esteemed colleague, Admiral Keller. We can show her what
Corynthe
society is truly about.”

Jessica imagined what she saw on the Jing Du’s face as he looked down was the origin of the saying S
taring daggers at someone
, for just the briefest instant, so fast she might have imagined it.

When he looked back at his king, he was all smiles.

“Of course, Your Excellency,” he said smoothly. “It shall be as you wish.”

Jessica doubted that, but at least she had a better understanding of the undercurrents here. The sneaker waves. The rocks. Now she just had to figure out how to maneuver in them, and if there were any allies she could make in this place.

Chapter XXVI

Date of the Republic November 1, 393 City of Corynthe, Petron

Denis never worked in the command centurion’s office, even after Keller had moved down to mostly work from the flag bridge and the previously unused Fleet Lord’s office.

His own office was much more cozy. And it was his office. His space.

Right now, he was reviewing scanner logs in his office with his two scouting experts, Giroux and
da Vinci
. She had brought in a portable hologram projector and was running it on a sped–up loop.

“It’s not obvious at first glance,”
da Vinci
drawled, pointing at the emerging patterns. “Things like this never are. But when I speed it up, what do you see?”

She leaned back and kind of draped herself across the chair. Denis knew Ainsley well enough to realize that she wasn’t trying to be sexy. This was just her normal default as a hot–shot pilot, looking down on everyone who didn’t fly. They were all born that way.

“Crap,” Denis replied. That pretty much summed it up.

“All of them?” Giroux continued, studying the image.

Denis watched the scene play out on the recording as
Auberon
and her consorts came into a high polar orbit. Up here, they were generally out of everybody’s way, as far as transports and local vessels went. Plus, they could quickly get anywhere on the surface of the planet if they needed to.

Not that he was expecting to execute a combat run on ground targets. But that wasn’t the same as being unprepared. Keller had trained them all to what she considered the proper level of paranoid preparedness. The locals would probably be aghast at the depth of tactical planning that had been done, or the number of targets that could be destroyed by calling out a single number.

At the speed of the recording playing back, he could see several of what the locals considered warships, the big Motherships that looked like geese in his eyes, all pull back, and then break orbit at different times and head off the same general direction. One by one, they leapt into Jumpspace and vanished.

“What’s left?” Denis asked.

da Vinci
leaned forward from her pose just enough to press a button. Her arms and fingers were longer than his. He would have pulled something, twisting like that.

On the screen, the image froze. Two dots lit up, one docked to the only big station in orbit, and one floating free in a relatively nearby orbit.

Denis looked close, gave up, and zoomed the image manually.

“Docked is the 3–ring
Sky Dancer
, according to traffic control,”
da Vinci
continued. “The other one is a 4–ring named
Supernova
. That latter one appears to be their flagship.”

“What’s the count?” Denis asked.

“Three of the 4–rings left the area, plus five of the 3–rings,” Giroux said. “In addition, more than a dozen vessels the local call Strippers, and nearly two dozen freighters, generally small but a couple of medium ones.”

“Strippers?” Denis wasn’t sure he had heard the man correctly.

“Portable chop shops, sir,” Giroux replied. “Locusts that descend after the pirates have captured someone. They set up portable air seals around parts of the vessel so they can cut out the parts they want, from what I have been able to gather, sometimes in the field, and sometimes in orbit.”

“How much firepower are we looking at?”

da Vinci
shrugged. “If they were all top–of–the–line Imperials, maybe three full Fleet Carriers worth of fighters,” she said. “A 4–ring can carry around twenty craft. The 3–rings have twelve to fifteen if they are full, but they rarely are. For comparison, there are also 2–ring craft with about eight to ten, and 1–ring Motherships that haul up to six.”

“Bear in mind,” Giroux interjected, “that the fighters we’re looking at are extremely old, and not nearly as capable as even our older M–5
Harpoon
fighters, although I did see an M–6
Gungnir
on one of them.”

“Really? How the hell did a first line Republic fighter get all the way out here? And in their hands?” Denis was amazed. Even
Auberon
had to make due with older craft, although he had high hopes that Keller’s connections to the First Lord would eventually rate them better gear.

“Mystery for the ages, boss,” da Vinci shrugged.

“So now what?” Giroux asked.

“You’ve done your part,” Denis said. “Now I need to talk to Keller, brief her, and figure out her contingency plans. You’ll know not long after I do.”

The two nodded, packed up their stuff, and departed, leaving him to ponder options and corners.

There was an entire Battle Fleet worth of firepower out here.

Apparently, piracy was
far
more profitable than he had ever imagined.

Did anyone else back home know that?

Chapter XXVII

Date of the Republic November 2, 393 City of Corynthe, Petron

Jessica mentally reviewed the file that Denis had sent her from his watchful spot in high orbit.

The implications were…unsettling.

She hoped that the departing Motherships weren’t immediately on their way back to
Sarmarsh IV
to try to reestablish the base. Of course, since it would take years for the moon to settle from all that energy, it might be worth watching them try.
How did you build a base on a suddenly earthquake–prone moon?

Worse, they might have all decided to run off and attack somewhere else. That was the downside. She couldn’t be anywhere near
Lincolnshire
to foil attacks if she was here. Hopefully, she could stop them permanently instead.
Nobody out here was dumb enough to provoke
Aquitaine,
were they?

She looked around the room and reconsidered things.

Tonight, the wealthy and famous of
Petron
were here. In a way, it reminded her of her reception at
Ramsey
, except everyone here appeared to be dressed for what they thought a pirate ball would look like. Or maybe, what one should be.

She
was
in the land of the pirates.

Marcelle stayed close, a second shadow everywhere Jessica went. Not that she minded. Tonight, she was only drinking from bottles and eating food brought to the event and supervised by her own marines. Appearances be damned.

Still, she circulated politely. Many wanted nothing to do with her. That was fine. She was the barbaric foreigner in this gathering, dressed in her boringly simple dark–green dress uniform, without even a knife at her belt.

Marcelle had a knife. Several of them, as a matter of fact, hidden about her body, along with two pistols. And a handful of marines close by. And all the rest of the firepower she might need to bring to bear, if Jessica screwed up so royally that she managed to start a war instead of preventing one.

Small steps.

A woman approached. A very tall, rangy,
slinky
kind of woman. One who gave off the faintest hint of spring flowers.

Jessica guessed her to be a very–well preserved middle age. She was showing off less bronze–colored flesh than a twenty–year–old would have, but doing a much better job of it. Her face was beautiful, if artfully maintained. It was her hands that gave the decades away. Too many spots and wrinkles.

Jessica would have suggested gloves to a woman who was a friend.

“Command Centurion Keller?” the woman asked, as if there was any doubt to the question.

Jessica nodded and studied the woman closer. She had not been announced at that rank at any point on this planet, so this was someone who knew who she was, or knew
Aquitaine
naval uniforms well enough to understand.

This stranger had shoulder–length hair. Jessica had a few grays starting to appear, so she had done enough research on the topic to know this woman’s head was probably completely gray by now, but it was dyed a rich black, and then tinted again with hints of violet that made her eyes stand out of her face.

They would have done that anyway, but the make–up made her unforgettable. Jessica had never met anyone with eyes that were such a dark shade of blue. Usually, blue meant lighter, tilting towards gray. These were the color of dark blue sapphires.

The rest of the face was equally well made up. And well maintained. She was utterly gorgeous, not just for her age, but for any age.

Jessica felt the weight of her stare, as if they were already enemies, having barely met. She was at a loss. Competition, perhaps?

“Desianna Indah–Rodriguez,” she said, matter–of–factly.

Jessica bowed politely to her, no more the wiser.

“Arnulf’s First Wife,” she continued.

Oh.

Yes, she supposed the woman might consider her competition, given that Arnulf had already proposed to her twice.

Jessica cocked her head. “First wife?” she tried to ask politely. No deportment class had ever covered something like this. Perhaps she should give a lecture at the Academy when she got back. She suppressed an unprofessional giggle.

“He has had three,” she replied, a touch frostily. “So far.”

“And you honestly believe I would consider being number four?” Jessica fired back, herself a touch frosty.
How dare this woman… No, be polite. When in Rome, and all that… Maybe.

“Having met you in the flesh,” Desianna said, relaxing a trifle, “no. I don’t see it. Not someone like you. Unless the Republic has radically changed the way they handle such affairs. Or wants to feed Arnulf to a black widow.”