A Call to Insurrection Read online

  “It happens,” Bryce said with a shrug. “Still, the bug usually doesn’t pick itself off the windshield and make it back to its home leaf. Very impressive that you were able to do that.”

  “We were lucky,” Quint said. “Usually once a battlecruiser is wrecked that’s it. But I have good men and women, and they were able to get us home.” Her lips compressed briefly. “Rather, I had good men and women.”

  “Is that what you’re doing here?” Bryce asked, nodding at the crowd around them. “Trying to get some of your competitors to take them on?”

  “I don’t have competitors anymore,” Quint said. “But yes, that’s the plan. Like I said, they’re good people. They deserve good jobs.” She cocked her head. “Right—I missed that possibility, didn’t I? You wouldn’t happen to be hiring, would you?”

  “As a matter of fact, I would,” Bryce said. “How many battlecruisers do you think you could crew right now?”

  Quint snorted. “How many have you got?”

  “Four.”

  Quint’s mouth started to open into a laugh. It froze halfway, her face abruptly stiffening. “You’re serious.”

  “Deadly serious,” Bryce assured her. “Four mothballed battlecruisers, plus probably a few smaller ships.”

  “Probably?”

  “I haven’t personally inspected the merchandise,” Bryce said. “But the sellers know what they’re doing, and they’re certainly going to keep their prizes in good shape. Of course, I’d want you to check everything thoroughly before any money changes hands.”

  “Of course,” Quint echoed, still studying her. “What group are you with?”

  “My associates aren’t mercs,” Bryce said. “No, wait—we’re supposed to say Contingency Management Firms these days, aren’t we?”

  “If we’re being pedantic,” Quint said. “Or bureaucratic.”

  “Words of a feather,” Bryce said philosophically. “Regardless, that’s not who we are. My associates are merely a group of interested individuals who want to deliver a message.”

  Quint smiled faintly. “There are courier ships for that, you know.”

  “They’re looking for something a bit more difficult to ignore,” Bryce said. “I dare say diplomatic subtleties are lost on a man like Gustav Anderman.”

  Quint’s face froze. “Anderman?”

  “Sixteen T-years ago he took over a system that was owned by someone else,” Bryce continued, pretending she hadn’t noticed the abrupt change in mood. “That someone has decided it’s time they took the system back. All they lacked were ships, which is where my associates come in, and crews, which is where you and the Quintessence come in.” She raised her eyebrows slightly. “Assuming you want to come in.”

  “Mmm,” Quint said, a polite but noncommittal tone. “Tell me more.”

  Translation: where the hell was Bryce going to find four battlecruisers no one else wanted? “Obviously, I can’t go into details until you’re officially aboard,” she said. “Hypothetically, though, there are ways that ships can, shall we say, go missing. Ships that various regional navies, such as the SLN, are decommissioning, for instance.”

  “The SLN,” Quint echoed, her voice flat.

  “Hypothetically, why not?” Bryce said. “They have a huge navy, and a fairly impressive turnover of their ships. When they’re done with something, it might be sent to, oh, say, Cormorant for salvage.”

  “I’ve heard about the stacks at Cormorant,” Quint said thoughtfully. “Lots of ships there, lots of groups running the various reclamation yards. Not just SLN decommissions, either.”

  “No, not at all,” Bryce said. “The majority of the stacks are privately owned, as I understand it, a lot of them mothballed for later reactivation or sale or reclamation. Huge backlog for the latter service, too—I hear it takes a lot of time and effort if you want to pull a ship apart into salvageable pieces instead of just blowing it to dust.”

  “Paperwork, too, I imagine.”

  “Oh, definitely paperwork,” Bryce agreed. “So many ships, so much paperwork. It’s a wonder that inventory slated for reclamation doesn’t accidently get sent to a different stack in an entirely different orbit.”

  “Yes, I can see how that could be a problem,” Quint said. “And with such a huge work backlog, it could be years before anyone even noticed that the next ship on their list had somehow gone missing.”

  “Assuming the list itself wasn’t also accidently corrupted,” Bryce said with a shrug. “In which case, someone could just tow the missing ship out of orbit, or cannibalize other ships in the stack for parts so that it could fly on its own, and no one would ever realize what had happened. As I said, mothballed or sold ships come in and out all the time. No one would even notice if the wrong one drifted away.”

  “A shame,” Quint said, nodding in commiseration. “The SLN does so like to keep its books in order.”

  “I’m sure it doesn’t cost that much to bring the books back into line.”

  “Ah,” Quint said. “In which case, no one would be looking for the missing ship because no one would know there was anything to look for.”

  “Exactly,” Bryce said. “It’s odd, sometimes, how some mistakes just sort of work themselves out.”

  “Hypothetically, of course.”

  “As I said,” Bryce agreed. “In the real world…” She waved a hand. “Who knows how things actually work?”

  “Truth is sometimes stranger than fiction,” Quint murmured. “Four battlecruisers, you say.”

  “Four battlecruisers,” Bryce confirmed. “I need an answer, Commodore.”

  For a long moment Quint gazed back at her. Then, almost unwillingly, the commodore’s eyes drifted across the room, settling on some of her officers.

  Bryce had always been good at reading faces, and the play of subtle emotions across Quint’s spoke volumes. The Quintessence had always been pretty much aboveboard, with all the right paperwork, all the right rules of engagement, and—most important of all—all the right tax receipts. What Bryce was suggesting was a serious step over a line Quint had taken pains not to cross.

  The commodore’s career and future were at stake, and for some people that would have been enough. But Quint was also shouldering the burden of her people: not just the officers and crew, but the ships full of dependents who traveled in the civilian vessels of the mercenaries’ fleet train.

  Finding jobs for competent mercs was relatively easy. Finding jobs with competent and legitimate groups was somewhat less so.

  Finding jobs with groups willing to take whole groups of families in tow was probably a nightmare.

  Bryce felt her lip twitch with the fresh reminder of the sort of place she and Quint were in. She doubted very much that the commodore had started with bottom-of-the-barrel places like this. Quint’s emotional kaleidoscope came to a slow stop, and she looked back at Bryce. “Yes,” she said, her voice gone suddenly soft and deadly. “Yes, I’d like very much to come in on this.”

  “Excellent,” Bryce said, suppressing a smile. People, dependents, and careers were all useful tools. But for something like this, nothing beat a big fat red button.

  Big fat red button, successfully pushed.

  “Let’s move it back one question, then,” she continued. “The one about crews.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Quint pursed her lips, her gaze defocusing. “I can fully crew one immediately. Assuming I can rehire the handful of people I’ve let go already, which shouldn’t be a problem. If I strip my support ships, I can fully crew one more, or put skeleton crews on all four. Class and origin?”

  “Not sure of the class,” Bryce said. “The sellers have been a bit cagey about the finer details. But they’re definitely surplused SLN.”

  “Well, we can get those details when we bring in the money,” Quint said. “Are the ships still armed?”

  “The beam weapons may still be in place,” Bryce said. “Not sure about that. No missiles, though. But my associates have a line on replacements.”

  “What’s our time frame?”

  “We’re hoping to get this moving in the next T-year or two,” Bryce said. “That includes everything: rearming, crew acclimation and training, and travel to the Andermani Empire.”

  A corner of Quint’s lip twitched at that last. “I’ll need a retainer fee. Fifty percent, up front.”

  “I can do better than that.” Bryce pulled out a data chip and set it on the table. “Once you pick that up, you and the Quintessence are on our payroll, at the same scale as you had on your last two jobs. The account the passcodes access should cover salaries and operating costs, plus a healthy cushion in case of unexpected costs or delays. We’ll eventually need a full breakdown on those extras, of course.”

  Quint nodded. “Don’t worry, my quartermaster is a wizard with receipts.”

  For a moment she gazed hard into Bryce’s face. Then, she reached over and picked up the data chip. “I’m still not convinced you’re not blowing smoke, you know,” she warned.

  “The funds in that account should convince you otherwise,” Bryce said. “Welcome aboard, Commodore. Now. I’ll be heading off-planet tomorrow morning, but if you can give me some idea of your travel schedule for the next few months I’ll be back in touch with you at my earliest opportunity to see how the recruitment is going. Once you’ve got your crews, we’ll move to pick up the ships and get started on the rest of the prep work. If you need me before that, the chip also has my contact information.”

  “We’ll be ready,” Quint promised. “I’ll message you if things go quicker.”

  “Excellent,” Bryce said, offering her hand. Quint took it in a nicely firm, no-nonsense grip and pumped it twice before letting go. “Again, Commodore, welcome aboard. I’ll look forward to our next meeting. And I’ll take care of that tab on my way out.”

  She stood up, an uncharacteristic hesitation spinning through her mind. She really shouldn’t do this, she knew.

  But the button was so big and so red and so satisfying to push. “And if you decide you really don’t want to go up against Gustav Anderman,” she added, “be sure to let me know.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Quint said, the same ice settling over her face again. “Don’t worry at all.”

  * * *

  It was always instructive, Bryce reflected as her air car lifted into the Dzung night sky, to see exactly how mercs obeyed an order from their commander. In this case, to see how expensive they would go with the drinks Quint had said someone else would be paying for.

  A crew with trust issues would likely aim low, figuring that they might still get stuck with their own tabs. A crew that was used to their commander meaning what she said was more likely to go all out, knowing that if the promised payment didn’t come through they’d at least get the entertainment value of watching her beat the welsher into the sawdust.

  In this case, it looked like the Quintessence crew trusted their commodore up to the very highest prices on the menu.

  Bryce gave a mental shrug. It wasn’t like it was her personal money, after all. And the fact that she’d found a competent commander and a loyal crew for the attack on Anderman should make her superiors at Axelrod very happy indeed.

  Probably happier than Jeremiah Llyn was making them.

  Of course, professional rivalries aside, it was hardly a fair contest. Bryce’s targets had been low-hanging fruit: a corporate head desperate to atone for the misdeeds of her predecessors, and a mercenary chief desperate for employment. Plus, in both cases, that heady mix of revenge and moral indignation that made people so willing to be manipulated.

  Llyn’s part of the job, in contrast, was a much steeper climb. There was no moral component to an attack on the Star Kingdom of Manticore, which meant he had to troll the blacker depths of the galaxy for the necessary firepower. Not simply the minimal firepower necessary to keep Andermani attention focused inward, as Bryce was going for, but a force strong enough to overwhelm the Manticoran defenses.

  And, moreover, to overwhelm them quickly enough that the takeover could be presented as a fait accompli to all the nations around it. A protracted war might give the Andermani and Havenites enough time to drag their attention away from Axelrod’s carefully engineered distractions and persuade them to intervene.

  Still, uphill climbs were Llyn’s specialty. If whoever he hired had the ships and the competence, they should make short work of a force as aged and inexperienced as the RMN. Once Llyn was confident the attack was ready to go, it would be Bryce’s job to get her diversionary force over to the Andermani Empire and start making trouble. Hopefully, the Haven diversion would also be in place to happen at that same time.

  And then, whatever Axelrod wanted with the Manticore System, they would have it.

  * * *

  It hadn’t worked out that way.

  Not even close.

  BOOK ONE

  1545 PD

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Herr Major?”

  Major Kau-jung Kleinberg looked up from the report on his pad and cocked an eyebrow at Oberbootsmann Taschner. “Yes?”

  “We’ve just picked up something a little odd, mein Herr,” Taschner said, gesturing at her display. “It may be nothing, but…”

  “One moment.” Kleinberg put away his pad and gave himself a push in the petty officer’s direction. It wasn’t much of a trip, given the Komet-class attack shuttle’s diminutive size, but it gave him a good excuse to get out of his chair for a bit. He caught the handgrip on the back of Taschner’s flight couch and peered over her shoulder. “Show me.”

  “As I say, mein Herr, it may be nothing,” Taschner said, “but we’re picking up what looks like a location transponder.”

  “Out here?”

  “Ja, mein Herr.” She craned her neck to look up at him. “You see my concern.”

  He nodded, frowning at Taschner’s displays. At the moment the shuttle was fifty-four million kilometers from the battleship Preussen, finishing up a Raumbatallion training exercise in The Cloud and awaiting pickup.

  It wasn’t like there wasn’t anything out here that might need a location transponder, of course. The Tomlinson System’s asteroid extraction industry was concentrated in The Cloud, which meant scores of platforms located throughout its volume, some tiny, some impressively large, and with the simmering unrest in the system, Potsdam had wanted to establish an on-going presence among them. The Komet’s current search-and-rescue exercise was one of the Imperial Andermani Navy’s points of presence, this one in particular halfway around The Cloud from the system’s sole inhabited planet and Preussen.

  Except that the transponder Taschner had spotted, positioned at one-zero-seven, zero-one-three and approximately twenty thousand kilometers away, didn’t seem to connect to any of the known platforms or currently active vessels.

  “As you can see, mein Herr, it’s closing on us,” Taschner continued. “Actually, it’s crossing our track. Velocity relative to the primary is approximately seventy-one thousand KPS. Track is one-niner-seven, relative, which means it will pass well astern of us.”

  And given their relative positions and vectors, an interception was out of the question. If they’d been in a proper ship with a proper impeller drive…but if wishes were horses… “Shindler?” Kleinberg called to the shuttle’s pilot. “Can anyone intercept it before it enters The Cloud?”

  “Negative, Herr Major,” Hauptbootsmann Ning Schindler said, shaking her head.

  Kleinberg grimaced. The fact that he’d expected the answer made it no more palatable. “Get me the flagship,” he ordered.

  “Ja, mein Herr,” Taschner replied. She tapped keys, then spoke into her mic. “Preussen, Shuttle Alpha.” She waited a moment, then looked up over her shoulder at Kleinberg. “Hot mic, Herr Major.”

  “Preussen, Major Kleinberg,” he said into his throat mic. “I need to speak to the officer of the watch, please.”

  * * *

  “I think Kleinberg is right, meine Kapitänin,” Fregattenkapitän Syin-ba Greuner said, looking at the icons on SMS Preussen’s main plot.

  “It would explain quite a lot,” Kapitänin der Sterne Florence Hansen agreed, frowning at the same icons. She looked up at her superior, Flotillenadmiral von Jachmann. “We knew they were getting matériel past us, mein Herr. We just hadn’t figured out how.”

  “Someone certainly should have,” Baron von Jachmann said, looking pointedly across at Korvettenkapitän Simon Bajer, Hansen’s Assistant Tactical Officer. Bajer, Hansen noted, kept his own eyes firmly on his console.

  Not surprisingly, and undoubtedly not for the first time. Native-born Tomlinsons were a rarity aboard Preussen, continually performing balancing acts with the rest of the ship’s company. But Bajer was a highly intelligent officer, the sort who thought things through, and if he was willing to put up with the pressure, Hansen was glad to have him aboard.

  She certainly had no interest in contributing to that pressure. “If by someone you mean me, Herr Flotillenadmiral, then you’re correct,” she said. “It is a classic smuggling ploy, after all.”

  “I didn’t mean you, meine Kapitänin,” Jachmann assured her.

  “Whether you did or not, the responsibility for such lapses ultimately rests with me,” she said firmly.

  And really, just because the ploy was classic didn’t mean it was used very often anymore. Most smugglers simply hid their contraband aboard incoming ships where customs agents weren’t likely to find it, or else used false manifests. Once through customs, the cargo would be transferred to a warehouse and either wait for someone to claim it or be passed on by friendly stevedores.

  But here in Tomlinson all customs inspections were under Imperial Andermani Navy control. That meant all incoming cargo had to pass through a single authorized platform, and the Empire’s severe penalties for smuggling loomed over any would-be smugglers. Under the circumstances, dropping a pod or two on a ballistic course for pickup was the smarter and safer choice.

  “Maybe that means they’re getting desperate,” Greuner offered.