CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
In the end, despite Quint’s comment, Basaltberg didn’t seem impressed at all by Retribution’s tidiness or lack of it. All he and the boatloads of soldiers he brought aboard cared about was collecting the Quintessence officers and crew, checking IDs, cataloging equipment and weapons—functional and otherwise—and hauling everyone and everything that was moveable across to a set of waiting transports.
At one point a large percentage of the soldiers disappeared, and Llyn caught a few scraps of conversation that suggested the destroyers that had charged out of The Cloud just before Hansen’s massive ambush had finally straggled in and surrendered. Considering that those crews had been a mix of Quintessence and Freet, the pre-surrender conversations aboard them must have been loud and interesting, possibly including some judicious gunfire.
But that didn’t seem to impact anything happening aboard Retribution. The Andermani finished their work, put everyone aboard transports for a quick trip down to one of Tomlinson’s army bases, and the processing began.
At which point it was Llyn’s turn to be impressed.
Axelrod had dealt with other mercenary groups over the years, and Llyn had heard his share of horror stories about defeated crews languishing in processing camps for months or even years while the winners painstakingly ran everyone’s identities, checked for possible war crimes or violations of the Deneb Agreement that could be held against them, and otherwise drowned everyone in paperwork.
Andermani didn’t drown in paperwork. If anything, they surfed on it.
The officers in charge of the processing were quick, precise, organized, and efficient. Almost frighteningly efficient, in fact. Within a week the first round of interrogations had been completed and Basaltberg’s people were sorting out the mercenaries from the home-grown Tomlinson insurgents, with special attention being paid to toward those of Preussen’s officers and crew who had committed mutiny and treason.
There would undoubtedly be more to be done with the latter two groups. But for the Quintessence the rules were clear and straightforward. Barely eighteen days after Quint’s surrender the entire company of mercenaries were aboard a pair of troop transports heading for New Berlin and their final disposition.
Of course, given Gustav’s history as one of the greatest mercenary commanders of his age, it made sense that the Andermani would have gotten the whole thing down to a science.
He didn’t see much of Quint during the two-week voyage to the Andermani capital. Officers and crewers were kept in separate sections, with the surviving Quintessence captains further segregated into their own block. His Quintessence uniform got some odd looks from the rest of Retribution’s officers, but no one went to the Andermani with suspicions or pointed fingers. Either Quint had already clued them in to Llyn’s supposed mercenary liaison identity, or else they simply trusted their commodore enough to accept whatever she did without question.
There was one last round of processing when the mercenaries reached Potsdam, but it was more perfunctory than Llyn had gone through at Tomlinson and he was released along with the rest of the officers in just three days.
Only to find that Quint herself had been summarily taken to Sorgenfrei Palace. Apparently, Emperor Andrew had invited her for a meeting.
* * *
In some ways, the two hours Llyn waited just outside the palace grounds were the longest of his life. Quint had desperately wanted to kill Andrew’s father, to the point of extracting a promise from Llyn to do the deed for her if she failed to complete it…and now Gustav’s son and successor had called for a confrontation.
Llyn had no way of knowing how much information the Andermani had on Quint’s obsession. But he could think of no way a private meeting translated into anything but trouble.
He was running all the possible scenarios through his mind for the hundredth time when he spotted her and her two-guard escort leave the palace and head toward one of the garden exits. A car pulled up to that gate as she approached, presumably preparing to whisk her away somewhere.
Llyn made sure he got to that rendezvous point first.
He was waiting near the car, ignoring the suspicious looks of the driver, as she and her guards came through the gate. “Commodore,” he said, taking a step toward her.
For that first second he wondered if she’d been drugged. Her eyes were downcast, her forehead wrinkled, her expression an odd mix of thoughtfulness and antipathy. Almost reluctantly, he thought, she looked up.
Her expression cleared a little as she saw who it was. But just a little. “Lieutenant Bax,” she greeted him in return. Her voice was the same mix as her expression. “The Andermani have formally released me to return to our fleet train. I’d assumed you’d already left with one of the other groups.”
“I was waiting for you, Commodore.” He flicked a glance over her shoulder at the palace. “Your meeting went well?”
“The meeting was interesting,” she said. “Come on, you can ride with me.” She looked at her guards. “If that’s all right,” she amended.
“Of course, Flotillenadmiral,” one of the guards said without hesitation. “If you’ll both get in, we can be on our way.”
Llyn didn’t expect Quint to share her story with a trio of Andermani listening in, and he was right. Nor was she apparently interested in talking about anything except Quintessence business once they were aboard the troop carrier with the last group of her officers, instead focusing on plans once they’d gathered the rest of their now meager assets together.
But finally, late that night, they found in Quint’s quarters the privacy Llyn had wanted.
“What did Andrew say?” he asked when the hatch was sealed behind them. “Did he offer any compensation for what his father did to your mother? Or even an apology?”
“Neither,” Quint said, that thoughtful look back on her face.
“Of course not,” Llyn said, feeling his lip twist. “But then, why should the son have more integrity than the father?”
“You’re missing the point,” Quint said. “He told me his father didn’t kill her.”
Llyn snorted. “So. Gremlins?”
She looked him straight in the eye. “My father.”
Llyn stared at her. It was an obvious deflection for Andrew to make, he belatedly realized, a standard shoving of someone’s guilt onto someone else.
But as he looked now into Quint’s eyes, he realized to his amazement that it might actually be true.
“He says Gustav did come to our hotel room,” Quint said, her voice going distant. Part of her believed it, Llyn could see, while another part wanted to reject the thought completely. “But he says it was to offer my mother a position with his group. They talked together for a few minutes, quiet and all very civilized. Quietly enough that I never heard any of it through the bedroom door. Then he left.”
A wave of old pain crossed her face. “And then my father, who’d been sitting listening to it all, went crazy. He was the one I heard shouting at my mother, not Gustav.” She closed her eyes. “And he’s the one who killed her.”
For a long moment they sat together in silence. There were questions Llyn wanted to ask, investigative poking he wanted to do at the edges of Andrew’s story.
But this wasn’t the time. Not yet.
“Then he came into the bedroom and told me Gustav had done it,” Quint said. “We went to the police station, he made his statement, and we went back to the hotel until it was time to leave.”
“And Gustav?”
“It took the police three days to track him down,” Quint said. “Not surprising—he was celebrating with his people and had no idea anyone was looking for him. By the time they found him and took his statement, we were gone. By the time they did an actual investigation, we were already on another job.”
“And out of reach?”
“Out of reach, and the Condotta Group was never much for personal accountability outside of the job anyway,” Quint said bitterly. “Andrew told me his father tried a couple of times to track us down, but I know my father changed names at least once and merc groups at least twice before I was eighteen. And I don’t remember us ever getting anywhere near Gustav again.”
“It is a big galaxy,” Llyn conceded.
“And it holds a lot of people who want someone else to do their fighting for them.” Quint shook her head. “I don’t know, Llyn. He could be lying through his teeth—he showed me Gustav’s copy of the police report, but those things can be faked. It’s just…why would he bother? Now that Gustav’s dead, why bother? Is the old man’s reputation that important?”
“Sometimes,” Llyn said. “I’ve known people whose public image was all they had. I guess my question is why would Gustav offering your family a position make your father go full berserker that way?”
“You weren’t listening,” Quint said. “He offered my mother a position, with me coming along as part of the package.” She hissed out a sigh. “Apparently, he thought my father was too unstable.”
“But she did turn him down, right?”
“Of course,” Quint said. “But I suppose even just listening constituted treason in my father’s mind. And was dealt with the only way he knew how.”
Another silence filled the compartment, a longer one this time. “And there’s one more bit of irony,” Quint said. “After laying out that whole spin-coaster of a ride for me…” She shook her head. “Andrew offered me a job.”
Llyn stared at her. “You’re kidding.”
“Apparently, the Empire recently lost a lot of qualified officers,” she said with a hint of the dry humor he hadn’t heard from her in a long time. “He said if I was willing to become an Andermani citizen and go through a two-year probationary and training period I could start right in as a senior officer. He also made the same offer to anyone from the Quintessence who I recommended.”
“Are you going to take the job?”
“No,” Quint said “At least, not now. I have the rest of my people to think about, see what I can do about getting them into other positions or settled elsewhere. But the offer’s apparently open-ended.” She gave him a slight smile. “You want me to recommend you?”
Llyn smiled back. “I don’t think there’s enough irony in the galaxy to even start ladling onto that one.”
“I thought not.” She took a deep breath. “I don’t know who you are, Llyn, or who you work for, or, really, what this was all about. But your employer put the Quintessence back on our feet, and I appreciate it.”
Llyn winced. And then, of course, Basaltberg knocked them right back down again.
But that was the life of a mercenary. That was the risk they took.
And even if the Deneb Agreement had required Quint to forfeit the warships she’d brought to Tomlinson—what was left of them, anyway—in exchange for repatriating her crews, she still had the non-combat ships of her fleet train plus the two destroyers that had been left there to watch over the dependents and other civilians. It wasn’t much, but a bit of judicious hiring out of her ships and her people and she could start rebuilding her organization.
“And I also gained some personal closure, so there’s that,” Quint went on. “Anyway. I’ll need to discuss our next destination with my officers, but you’re welcome to stay with us until we reach some place that’s convenient for you.”
“Thank you,” Llyn said. “I’ll make sure I’m not a burden to you any longer than I have to be.”
“No problem.” She gave him another small smile, this one looking a bit more relaxed. “And if you ever come across anymore warships that have gotten lost in the paperwork, let me know.”
“You’ll be the first,” Llyn promised.
And actually, once Axelrod finally took over Manticore, there might well be a warship or two they would want to get rid of.
Something to think about.
* * *
“And so, we are met again,” Emperor Andrew said, looking down the table at the assembled guests.
Marija sat quietly, following his gaze, remembering the last time they’d all been assembled this way: Admiral Basaltberg, Kanzlerin von Schwarzer Flügel, Außenminister Yuèguìshù Shān, Admiral der Flotte Berg, and Friedrich der Grosse’s commander Kapitänin der Sterne Sternberger. It wasn’t a table aboard a battleship this time, but the personnel were the same.
And the last time they’d been together Andrew had threatened to have every single one of them executed for treason.
They all remembered that threat, certainly. And the fact that they’d been right to keep the Emperor out of battle—and Marija fully believed they’d been right—didn’t change the fact that they had indeed disobeyed Andrew’s direct orders to the contrary.
More to the point, she was pretty sure Andrew knew they’d been right, too.
But that might not make a difference.
There were some leaders, Marija knew, who never backed down from a position. Sometimes it was from stubbornness, sometimes from a fear their opponents would think them weak or indecisive, sometimes because they were firmly convinced they were right and to hell with logic or reason.
Andrew was keenly aware that some thought him too weak to rule, and Hansen’s bizarre claim to the throne just served to underline his youth and inexperience.
Sometimes he would share his thoughts and plans with Marija. Not this time. Whatever he had to say to this assembly, Marija would hear it the same time they did.
“I assume you all remember our last meeting,” Andrew said. “You’ll recall I wanted to immediately attack the Tomlinson traitors. All of you stood as one to defy that order, insisting I be returned to Potsdam and safety before returning to bring them to justice, Now, because of that delay, it would appear that many more good men and women have been forced to give their lives for the Empire.”
He paused, looking again around the table. Marija held her breath, noting the quiet stiffness in the others’ postures and their carefully controlled expressions.
“However,” Andrew continued, “I say it would appear because none of us truly knows what would have happened if you’d attacked as I wished. We know the insurgents received additional ships during the delay, but we don’t definitively know how much of their force was already prepared. Most significantly, we don’t know the state of the massive missile ambush that came close to costing the entirety of Admiral Basaltberg’s force. If even a large percentage of it was already in place at that time, none of us might be here now.”
He paused again…but this time Marija could see a hint of a smile touching his face. “An Emperor cannot afford to have his word flouted for no reason,” he said. “But likewise, an Emperor cannot afford to ignore sound advice, whether or not in the heat of the moment he judges it to be sound.”
He raised his eyebrows. “And an Emperor certainly cannot afford to destroy the voices that offered that counsel.
“I imagine some of you, at least, came here today expecting to hear a pronouncement of judgment on you. Instead, I offer my apologies and gratitude. We don’t know how an earlier battle might have turned out, but we do know that my life and the stability of the Empire would have been put at risk. I therefore withdraw the punishments I threatened you with, and ask your forgiveness for my hasty and ill-considered speech.”
“You are our Emperor, Majestät,” the Kanzlerin said gravely, the weight of her long service mixing with relief. “But like all of Gott’s servants, you are also human. We will always extend forgiveness to you for your errors if you will likewise extend such forgiveness to us.”
“Thank you,” Andrew said. “And now, I’ll allow you to return to your duties. But.”
He lifted a warning finger. “In three short weeks’ time I will marry my beloved. A short time after that, I expect there to be an heir to the Imperial throne.
“After that, if you ever again wish to keep me out of battle, you’ll need to come up with a new excuse.”
* * *
And so, the man who was Emperor and the woman who’d sought to replace him finally met.
It wasn’t the way Hansen had expected. She’d envisioned a triumphal return to New Berlin, with Flotillenadmiral von Jachmann announcing her arrival, Graf von Basaltberg and a large part of his fleet escorting Preussen into orbit, and Admiral Donnic aboard the battleship Liegnitz making sure the rest of the Capital Fleet remained calm. She’d envisioned the Kanzlerin and Staatsministerium gathered to meet her shuttle, and a triumphant journey to Sorgenfrei Palace. She’d envisioned Andrew humbly welcoming her as he swore fealty to the new Empress, and standing to the side as she ascended the throne that was rightfully hers.
But Jachmann was dead, his murder a crime that would now likely never be solved. Basaltberg had rejected her and her claim, and had beaten her ships into twisted shards of debris and lifeless bodies. Her Tomlinson allies were taken or dead or scattered, the army systematically dismantling their bases and confiscating their stocks of weapons. If any of the Empire’s ministers had stood up in her support, she’d not heard any word of it. The mysterious ally who’d hired the Quintessence Mercenaries and sent intel and weapons to her had vanished as if he’d never existed.
And the young man—the far too young man—seated in front of her showed not a single iota of humility as he prepared to pass judgment.
Even here, it didn’t go as she’d envisioned.
“It’s ironic, really,” Andrew said, a sort of melancholy in his face as they stared across the two-meter gap that separated them. “All the time I was growing up I longed to have a brother or sister. But it never happened. I had to make do with the friendship of nurses like Marija, and the limited time I had to spend with my parents, and the greyhounds.”
One of the two dogs that had settled down at the foot of the throne perked up a bit, as if she knew Andrew was talking about her. She paused there a moment, then laid down her head again.
“Do you know why my parents never had other children?” Andrew asked.
“No idea,” Hansen said. She hesitated, but the little dig was too tempting to resist. “Maybe Gustav’s lower strength wasn’t up to it. He certainly had no trouble with my mother.”
“Ironically, it was because of concerns about this exact situation,” Andrew continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “My father had read about the chaos that periodically erupted in Old Europe, siblings fighting among themselves for control of their various countries. He’d seen the modern-day equivalent when a mercenary commander unexpectedly died and his top lieutenants tore the organization apart in attempts to gain and solidify their power. My father thought it would be safer for the Empire if I remained an only child.”
He gave her a sad smile. “I never expected my dream and their nightmare to come together this way.”
“It’s not too late,” Hansen said. It probably was, actually, but she had nothing to lose by trying. “Surely by now you’ve seen the DNA evidence that I’m your older half-sister. That gives me a legitimate claim to the throne you’re sitting on. And I think we can both agree that I’m better suited for the job.”
“The job.” Andrew smiled again, but this time there was only ice there. “Is that all you think it is? A job?”
“I have more life experience,” Hansen said. “More military training—”
“Yes, I’ve seen the evidence,” Andrew interrupted. “I presume it came from Totenkopf Major Strossmeyer?”
“He was the one who brought it to me, yes,” Hansen said, feeling her eyes narrow. Andrew wasn’t supposed to know about Strossmeyer.
“Did you know he was planning to run out on you?” Andrew asked. “As soon as it was clear that the ambush on my father’s cortège had failed he began working on the Manticorans to let him emigrate there.”
Hansen stared at him. Strossmeyer had been going to desert her? Ridiculous. He’d pledged to work here on Potsdam to gather support among the Totenkopf and government officials in preparation for her return.
“Though he adjusted his timetable a bit when we offered him an opportunity to assassinate me,” Andrew went on, his smile fading, the ice turning into granite. “He apparently decided that before he ran he could finish the job you’d started.”
“We were never going to kill you,” Hansen insisted. “You were just going to be placed into custody while the courts and Landtag debated my claim.”
“Into custody,” Andrew repeated. “That was the same excuse used by the traitors who tried to depose my father. You do remember that, don’t you? Because I certainly do.”
Hansen clenched her teeth. “That was an attempted coup,” she said. “This was different.”
“No,” Andrew said. “Because this wasn’t just an attack on me. It was an attack on the structure of the Andermani Empire.”
He gave a little sigh. “You see the Emperor’s throne as a job, my sister. But it’s far more than that. The Emperor is a symbol, the soul of the nation, an example the people should be able to look up to.” His eyes hardened. “The soul of the Andermani Empire does not include mutiny, treason, and murder.”
The excuses and explanations that had long been simmering in Hansen’s heart came boiling up into her throat. But as she gazed into Andrew’s face, they remained unspoken.
Because there was clearly no longer any point.
“If you’d brought this evidence peaceably to my father—our father—a year ago, things might have been different,” Andrew continued. The sadness was back in his voice, but the steel and granite remained untouched by it. “If you’d brought it to me six months ago there might have been the judicial hearings you spoke of.
“But you did neither. Instead, you sought to seize the throne through violence and at the cost of thousands of Andermani who had looked up to you as their commander.
“Your actions have left me no choice, Kapitänin der Sterne Florence Hansen. In the name of the Andermani Empire, I sentence you to death.”
He lifted his eyes to the Totenkopfs holding her restraints. “Take her away.”
And as the guards walked her back to her cell, Hansen wondered if she’d been wrong. If perhaps Andrew did indeed have the resolve and ruthlessness necessary to be Emperor.
And that, too, was something she hadn’t envisioned.